Anything The Great American Eclipse (AKA Anything Photography)

[Wookie06]

So I know I started hearing about the eclipse a year or two ago and I knew it was a fairly big deal for our area. Well we're right there where you need to be. Right in the band for the total eclipse and pretty much within a few mile of the maximum eclipse or something. All I know is that from a witnessing the eclipse viewpoint you can't get too much better than my deck. ****ing amazing.

So, I don't have tons of money to blow on camera gear but I've been making some purchases to try to capture the moment myself. I ordered a cheap lens that arrived today. It's much heavier than the lenses that came with my Cannon EOS 70D I picked up a couple years ago and it really demonstrated the limitations of my old tripod. I ordered a remote shutter controller, tripod, and solar filter today. All relatively inexpensive. The solar filter might need some toying with to get it to work. Even if I don't need it to shoot the total eclipse I'll need it to practice on the naked sun.

I'm trying to get into learning how to adjust my camera better. Takes the old brain repetition and practice. I took a few shots today of the moon. Here you go.

[Spook]

I am going to shoot a commercial for the first time in a while. Haven't done much camera stuff, but I too will be in the totality area and am going to take some awesome pictures.

[Eversor]

I feel like I'm there

[Obi_Kwiet]

Shooting an eclipse is going to be *hard*. You've got ridiculously huge swings in exposure to deal with, and you might have a second or less to get the best shots. You should figure out what shots you want to bother with on your equipment, and have the setting pre-planned. I only have one camera, so I'll probably try to get the beads and do a bracket of totality.

Take a look at a guide like this one: http://www.mreclipse.com/SEphoto/SEphoto.html

[Wookie06]

As awesome as it would be to get some great landscape and whatever and several shots, I really can only hope to do so much. I found that just having the tripod on the deck was not going to work with people walking on it so I was thinking about moving to the ground. That's when I realized I had a better option. We have a travel trailer (towable RV) that is parked right behind the deck. I sat the tripod on there and managed to get some decent shots of the moon. Remote shutter release will help although I might not have needed it as I could just remote shoot from my phone but I wanted a reliable manual solution. The new tripod might not be perfect but it certainly won't be worse. I hope I can adapt the filter. I want to take some practice shots on the regular sun before hand.

One of the problems I have is focusing this lens. It doesn't have a fine adjustment so it's a little challenging. Ideally I might not even need such a large lens but I don't regret the purchase. It was under $200 and does give me something to play around with. On that note, I have a telescope my mother bought for my dad about 15 years or so ago. I'm thinking about pulling that out and trying to figure it out. I've never messed with it.

Coincidentally our daughter and her family are going to be here. Absolutely not planned because of the eclipse but just happened to work out that way.

[Spook]

So what does everyone think this omen of an eclipse is foreshadowing?

[Wookie06]

Well at least it has already proven the earth is flat.

[Reid]

Supposed to be at 83% here and I don't feel like driving to South Carolina to get the full eclipse, so I guess I'll enjoy it from here. Minus 17%.

[Wookie06]

So I had to send the lens back. The case that came with it was too short to leave the adapter on for my camera and the second or third time I went to remove the adapter to store the lens it broke the threaded ring loose and just spun. I ordered a much more expensive lens that I'll try. It's fairly well rated and should do well. If I was a pro I'm sure I'd go a different route but I can't afford pro equipment nor am I even remotely near that level.

I just started shooting some pictures in raw format. Lightroom is installed. I personally always shot highest quality jpeg so messing with raw will be new. I shot a few pictures at Mammoth Cave this past weekend and I think a couple more moon shots so I have some files to mess with. I'll see if I have something to share in a few days.

[Obi_Kwiet]

I just started shooting some pictures in raw format. Lightroom is installed. I personally always shot highest quality jpeg so messing with raw will be new. I shot a few pictures at Mammoth Cave this past weekend and I think a couple more moon shots so I have some files to mess with. I'll see if I have something to share in a few days.

RAW is ridiculous. The amount of dynamic range you get over jpeg is crazy. Since getting lightroom, I never shoot everything else. I'm so glad that I shot most of my other photos in RAW before.

[Spook]

There is no good reason not to shoot in RAW.

Say it again.

NO GOOD REASON NOT TO SHOOT IN RAW

convert to dng afterwards though, for sure.

[Wookie06]

I disagree. Lots of people have no reason to shoot raw. I do agree, though, that raw is the way to go.

[Wookie06]

Got my new lens today. Head and shoulders above the last one but that was obvious. They're in totally different classes. I do hope I don't have any problems getting the refund for the returned lens. This has been a pricey month for me.

[Spook]

Whats the new one? If you posted it I am missing it.

[Wookie06]

Tamron SP 150-600mm. Pretty big jump in price, features, and quality from the first lens I bought. I have an ND filter for it. Only thing I'm struggling with now is practicing focussing on the sun. I know it will be easier during totality but if I want to get shots prior I'm just not seeing it now. Once I get focussed I should be able to get some after shots. I also need to practice bracketing. I know it's not technically a hard thing to do but it's just one more feature I have to figure out how to use effectively and efficiently.

[Eversor]

Today's the day.

[Thrawn[numbarz]]

We had about 75% coverage here, apparently. Didn't get nearly as dark as I was expecting.

[Wookie06]

Oh crap, was that today?

[Spook]

Yep. I was in totality, it was pretty bizarre. Also that looks like a nice lens.

[saberopus]

Oh crap, was that today?

[Wookie06]

So it was pretty frickin' amazing. I should have practiced more on shooting the sun because I was having a hard time focusing but then I realized there was a reflection between the lens and the filter and when I aligned them I could get a sharp image. I decided against buying a hooded viewer which would have helped immensely.

I took several pictures, didn't really have anything to frame the sun against so they're not really dramatic. When I have time to combine and edit them I'll get some posted.

[Darkjedibob]

This is the best shot I got my phone, we were at 82-86%

[Reid]

It downpoured at the peak here, got some good photos though.

[Eversor]

Yep. I was in totality, it was pretty bizarre.

Bizarre? You mean like this?

[Reverend Jones]

lol

[Eversor]

lol

[Eversor]

Totally hijacking this thread, but the celebration of Trump's willful disregard for his own health reminds me of this classic political ad:

[happydud]

My story of the day:

Lauryl and I flew into Kansas City last night to see the eclipse with some old coworkers. Last night the weather forecast was looking cloudy for today, so we decided to hop in the car and chase the sunshine.
We woke up at 6 am, and on the road by 7. We were using four different weather apps, Waze and Google Maps, and drove an hour east before stopping for breakfast.
We thought that would be a good spot, but the clouds rolled in. Our Dark Sky cloud cover predictor told us there was a 75% chance of cloud cover. If we could get past Columbia, MO there was a much lower chance of clouds.
So we drove east.
Looking at the sky from the highway, the clouds overhead were thick, but there was a break to the south-east. We had about an hour before totality, which started at 1:08pm. So we turned southward and set a goal to get as far as we could by 12:45, then find a spot to hunker down.
We sped through country roads, projecting cloud movements and charting a course on Google Maps to get us as far from the clouds as we could.
At 12:43, we hit a river. Dead end. We couldn't get any farther south. Luckily, there was a park, so we got out there.
Turns out, we were about 1000 feet from the center path of the eclipse. We had 2 minutes and 40 seconds of totality.
I saw someone on the internet say "the difference between 100% totality and 99% totality is like the difference between dying and almost dying." And they are spot on - that's the best way to describe it. Five seconds before totality it was like early dusk and you couldn't look at the sun. One second into totality and it was dark, you could see planets and stars, and you could look right at the moon/sun.
The light disappeared, the temperature dropped 5-10 degrees, the wind picked up, people started cheering.
It was surreal. Words can't do it justice, but I've attached a few pictures Lauryl took.
April 2024 is the next eclipse. Don't settle for a partial eclipse. Even 99% is hugely different from a total.
Do whatever it takes to see it.

My girlfriend took these 3 pictures:

[Phantom-Seraph]

My boss left town so my co-worker and I hung out in the parking lot to watch the eclipse. I brought my tripod and taped down a pair of eclipse glasses to my lens visor and was able to follow most of it. The result is a bit shaky, I had to reset a number of times since I was zoomed in all the way and, well, because the sun moves.

Here is what an unedited photo from the time lapse appears. I brought it all into after effects and masked out the white and stitched everything together into the smoothest rendition I could in the time I have.



I was a bit too south for the totality zone, but we got about 91% here.

[Obi_Kwiet]

There was a little lens flare, but it's still pretty neat. I bet that's the only time most people will ever get to see Mercury.

[Krefft]

I'm not sure if people will care about this, it's almost more like a home movie that happens to include the eclipse. We were in Waterloo Illinois which had just over 2 minutes of totality. There's a lot of shaky camera footage and a 4 year old, but some of the eclipse stuff is cool!

https://youtu.be/Bo3RjVnjU_M

[Spook]

https://youtu.be/TPKI9SR6hA0 I made this with a photography device

[Admiral Zarn]

I'll have to get the footage off of my camera soon. I've been trying not to think of the eclipse, since that day was a bit of a trainwreck. I helped a local school launch a weather balloon. The balloon touched down inside a thick forest in Kentucky. The expedition to recover it.... did not go so well.

[alpha1]

Haven't posted here in years, and I only came by here to see if an old photo I uploaded over a decade ago was still here (to see if it was better than the one in my backups), but have a couple of cropped photos of the eclipse that I took from Columbia Missouri.

Sorry about the blurriness, there was quite a bit of haze during totality in Columbia MO, though apparently the Kansas City area got rained out, so I shouldn't be too picky.

Also, didn't see anyone else mention it, but the way the corona turned red in the last seconds before totality ended was amazing. And as Happydud said, the drop in temperature was quite noticeable, and a nice (if very temporary) respite from the hot and humid Midwest summer weather.

[Wookie06]

So I really wasn't skilled enough at shooting eclipses to get a great shot but I got a some interesting ones.







Also, although I'm rusty and it's been a bit, here are a couple of projects. The first one is a personal project and one that I won't consider complete for awhile. I'll revisit it later.

Before Image:


After Image:
Attachment 28595

[Wookie06]

This one was a project I did for free for one of the ladies that works at my school. She offered to pay but I refused. She has given me another project that I need to get busy on and offered me $100 which I am not going to refuse.

Before Image:


After Image:

[saberopus]

Nice! Looks like you swapped the before/after on the group of kiddos. It's tricky when a whole eye is missing in things like this. Your substitute is quite good, but every-so-subtly makes the face look quite older, somehow.

Also, the eclipse shots are nice!

[Wookie06]

Nice! Looks like you swapped the before/after on the group of kiddos. It's tricky when a whole eye is missing in things like this. Your substitute is quite good, but every-so-subtly makes the face look quite older, somehow.

Oh, yeah, I sure did swap that. The eye is mirrored from the existing one. The photo is so rough. After I did this project I actually steamed the photo, put it in a document protector and clamped it between two boards in a vice to correct some wrinkles and it was actually much more off where it is torn and started it over. The baby in the photo is actually my wife with her older brothers and sister. The really amazing thing is just how much color was brought out of the original photo with just a curves adjustment layer.

There was so much missing detail on her face and dirt in the entire photo that I think you get to a point where further corrections are so difficult that you basically need to be a digital artist to fix it.