How to prepare my camera for a solar eclipse

[Wes Tausend]

In order to photograph the last total US eclipse in Wyoming, I simply used the pair of low cost protective glasses, that my brother procured for us, by holding them over the small video camera lens as the eclipse approached totality and re-emerged. I figured if the plastic lens was good enough for my eye, it was good enough for the ccd. The video came out great, similar to davenn's above photos. Of course I had to watch the final moments on my view screen, since I had no additional safety glasses. I pre-tested the idea on the normal sun first.The cam was a Sony HDTCX405, and cost about $180 or less on sale.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Today was the long-awaited day.

I woke up to find, to my utter dismay, that it was so gloomy that we had to switch on the lights inside the house. Anyways, I tested my luck and went to the roof. The eclipse started at 08:27am, and I could first see the Sun at about 08:35am, playing hide and seek behind the clouds. Viewing through the glasses with solar film, I could not see anything. So I removed all the ND filters, and took some photos with only the CPL and UV filters attached.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

After that, the intensity of the light increased a bit, so I attached ND-16 and ND-4 filters stacked over each other.

Now it is absolutely gloomy, with no gaps in the clouds. It has started drizzling as well, so no hope of any more shots.

I found that if I used the full 60x zoom, the image was getting blurred.

I have the images in RAW format as well. If somebody has lightroom/photoshop and wants to play with them, I can provide the RAW images.

 

[russ_watters]

I woke up to find, to my utter dismay, that it was so gloomy that we had to switch on the lights inside the house. Anyways, I tested my luck and went to the roof. The eclipse started at 08:27am, and I could first see the Sun at about 08:35am, playing hide and seek behind the clouds. Viewing through the glasses with solar film, I could not see anything. So I removed all the ND filters, and took some photos with only the CPL and UV filters attached.

Not bad, but your exposures are too long -- make them shorter! (or put the filters back on) Take a bunch of photos at varying exposures.

The broken clouds moving across the disk actually give a cool extra drama to the photos. They're not ideal, but not that big of a problem either.

Keep 'em coming!

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Keep 'em coming!

Only one more to post: the parting shot.

 

[davenn]

Only one more to post: the parting shot.

Awesome effort on all shots :)
As @russ_watters said, the clouds didn't really detract from the images you got
Gave a more "dramatic" effect

Yeah, your exposure was a bit high

 

[sophiecentaur]

Not bad, but your exposures are too long

Agreed. It's hard to believe how much you need to 'under' expose shots of Sun and Moon - and even the planets. If you look at the images with the 'dropper' tool in your editor, you should ideally expect the disc to be a bit less than 255,255,255 all over. Then you would see the change in luminosity across the Sun's disc and have a better idea of structure. Same ideas apply to imaging Moon; low exposure will chow lunar craters and landscape.

 

[Wrichik Basu]

Partial solar eclipse on 21 June 2020.​

Used four ND filters (16, 8, 4, 2) along with a UV filter; exposure set to minimum possible. Some photos:

All photos were taken with Panasonic FZ70. Taking photos at maximum zoom (60x) was costing the sharpness of the image. Maybe the abberation was due to the five lenses attached.