Total Eclipse - Totality blew it

[OpticsEngineer]

Observing the total eclipse in the woods near Broken Bow Oklahoma. Using my Olympus EPL7 with VF2 viewfinder handheld with Olympus 75-300 to view the eclipse. (I really like how the adjustable tilt of the viewfinder makes it so you can view upwards without craning your neck--- I use that a lot in Europe looking at cathedral ceilings.)

Broken clouds so during totality the sky was momentarily clear, usually hazy. So I was taking my ND filter on and off. Spending most of my time with family and enjoying the environmental effects with the really dark conditions bringing out fireflies that started flying around us.

What I did not expect was there would be solar flares so brilliantly visible at totality. You could see them by naked eye. But since my camera was handheld.... oh well.... you see what I got.

haze is from the clouds

 

[Photongraphy]

Artistic!

 

[john isaacs]

Observing the total eclipse in the woods near Broken Bow Oklahoma. Using my Olympus EPL7 with VF2 viewfinder handheld with Olympus 75-300 to view the eclipse. (I really like how the adjustable tilt of the viewfinder makes it so you can view upwards without craning your neck--- I use that a lot in Europe looking at cathedral ceilings.)

Broken clouds so during totality the sky was momentarily clear, usually hazy. So I was taking my ND filter on and off. Spending most of my time with family and enjoying the environmental effects with the really dark conditions bringing out fireflies that started flying around us.

What I did not expect was there would be solar flares so brilliantly visible at totality. You could see them by naked eye. But since my camera was handheld.... oh well.... you see what I got.

haze is from the clouds

Handheld, PL7, 300mm, 1/3sec!?!?

In the future, shoot AutoISO and let the camera pick a suitable shutter speed for your focal length.

 

[Michael Benveniste]

I blew it differently. I failed to refocus after removing the ND filter, so I got nice sharp shots until totality.

 

[cr0100]

My shots at totality were:

1/60 at f/7.1, ISO 200

Even with a bit of cloud cover, 1/3 second would be crazy overexposed - unless there was a big honking ND filter still in place...

 

[OpticsEngineer]

Yes, my EPL7 had a 16 stop ND filter on it that can gives nice pictures directly pointed the sun in clear skies. For totality, I mostly switched to over to using my OM1 with the 18-150 zoom lens and no filter as I was mostly taking family photos. But I did take a few shots of the total eclipse with my OM1. Like the one below.

 

[cr0100]

Bummer! Well, if you’re young enough, there’s another one in the US in 20 years or so. I’ll be almost 80 so I’m not so sure I’ll see it…

I got this with my E-M5iii and 75-300ii and no filter…

 

[OpticsEngineer]

That is a really nice photo showing the purple solar prominences. Thanks for posting.

Did you use a tripod? I see you had -3eV dialed in.

What I did with my OM1 was spot metering on the rim of the eclipse with 0 eV selected and it seems the solar prominences just got washed out. Although maybe it was more a matter of the high thin clouds scattering light. The clouds came and went many times during the four minutes of totality so it was hard to settle on any particular setting that was good.

I am 61 and my wife seems to have gotten the bug to go see eclipses. So it seems I have a few more to go.

 

[cr0100]

I had a tripod set up right in front of my chair (our motel had a south-facing patio so all we had to do was step outside of our room to enjoy). With the viewscreen flipped out, it was easy to just look down and see what was happening.

When totality came, I knew that any autoexposure was going to blow out the highlights, so I just dialed down the EV until it "looked right" and shot maybe 5 frames. I wanted to spend time enjoying the view, too, so I didn't want to have my nose down to the camera the whole time. I'm 58, so the odds of seeing another total solar eclipse in this country in my lifetime are... well, there's a chance but it's not a guarantee.

Here's my very-simple setup. EM5 in front of me on a tripod, GoPro off to one side doing a timelapse. This was taken about 3 minutes before totality, so the light was getting FUNKY (taken with my iPhone)

Very simple photo setup for the eclipse. EM5 in front of me, GoPro off to the right.

 

[jjbinx]

:-D I just read the title of your post more carefully - good one :-D

jj

 

[BobKo]

I shot video of the totality phase of the eclipse, using my Panasonic GH6 and Panasonic 100-300mm lens (zoomed all the way in). The lens has a UV filter on it, but I otherwise used no other filters. Here is how the last 45 seconds or so looked:

 

[cr0100]

Nice little video clip there - thanks for sharing.