2017 Solar Eclipse

Did quite a bit of reading up and preparing to shoot the solar eclipse. Ordered an inexpensive polymer sheet of solar filter material, advised it would be necessary for most partial phases. (Also made a slit viewer for my wife out of the leftover scrap.) Took the camera out the day before to try some exposures on the full sun with the solar filter.

Set up the tripod and the 300 mm lens in the parking lot behind work, and used a remote release to prevent vibrating the camera with the shutter button. Where I live (work is just outside of the state capital, Albany) we had some cloud cover move in about a third of the way through the action. At times, the sun was completely obscured. At other times it would peek through the clouds. Once the eclipse was well underway and the clouds further inhibited the light, I switched to a couple stacked neutral density filters to knock the light down enough to photograph. The orange images are shot through the solar filter, and the white images through the ND filters. The photos picked up a little color chroma from the ND filters, adding a surprise sepia tone to clouds in a spherical aberration pattern. (They were all white while viewing).

These photos are straight from the camera, in the interest of a “Photoshoot” post. They are untouched and uncropped. I’m still shopping for a teleconverter, which will further “extend” or magnify the focal length of the camera. With a 2x doubler (two-times), the equivalent focal length would have been 600mm. Click any photo to view the media file.

Shooting with the solar filter was pretty much wild guess exposures, with a little knowledge from Sunday’s practice and some general pointers from photo experts. With the ND filters, it was possible to use the exposure meter to get in the ball park. Above images are selected keepers, the following is a grab bag of goofs and also-rans.

Had a great time with the shoot, and actually I’m quite pleased with the images captured. Now I just need to hang on to that solar filter until the next one!

Best regards,

Pazlo