Photography of the Cairns Solar Eclipse

[Scott_Martin]

Hello all,

I am a budding photography enthusiast and have recently got my self a Nikon D5100 camera and am fortunate enough to be heading to Cairns for the Total Solar Eclipse!!

I have been practicing at home taking photos of the sun with ND filters and playing with different shutter speeds and aperture settings for when I am taking photos of the partial stage of the eclipse.

Does anyone out there have any helpful tips and/or specific camera settings that should be used to best capture the totality stage, how to best capture the diamond ring effect and the corona of the Sun etc??

Any advice on photography of a solar eclipse would be much appreciated!!

-Scott

[maxwolfie]

Also interested, having never shot the sun before!

Is it safe (for the sensor) to stack ND filters to shoot the sun?

[Scott_Martin]

I have heard and read on the internet that ND filters are enough. To back this up I have also had a reply to a private message from a member of this site who is experienced in solar photography;

"You should really image the sun with a solar filter, but ND5-7 is good without looking in the view finder. Use live view if you have it."

"For totality images are f5.6 at ISO 100 starting at 1 second and moving down in shutter speed to 1/4000 of a second will get you some nice images.

Try imaging next week to get some practice. All through the partial stages use ISO 200 at f 5.6 and shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second. You will capture good detail even in white light. ";

:thumbsup:

[Phil Hart]

Check out this thread with links to exposure calculators etc:

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=92384

Phil

[Rob_K]

Hi Scott & Max. If it's any help to you, I've attached some crops of my shots of the 2010 eclipse with the exposure & camera settings details given. These are crops off the original subs, no processing, jpegs straight off the camera. The top line are all the same exposure times & settings. The lower ones are at increasing exposure times - the bottom-right one is included as a joke, showing what happens when you are photographing from aboard a ship and go too long! :P You may have to enlarge the image when it opens.

Two things to remember though:

(a) We can consider ourselves very, very lucky if we see anything of the total eclipse at all, given the location and timing;

(b) Even if we see totality, it may be that there will be interfering cloud. For those photographers relying on well-practised automated sequences or on eclipse exposure calculators, everything will be thrown out the window at that point! The last thing you want to be doing during those precious two minutes is fumbling with camera settings and missing the experience. So be prepared to bail out on the photography because the visual impact is awe-inspiring & humbling and you won't need a photo to remind you of it. :thumbsup:

Anyway, along with the rest of the shadow-chasers I live in hope of the perfect window of sky! Good luck!

Cheers -

[dannat]

nice tips Rob

[Scott_Martin]

Thanks Phil and Rob,

Not long to go now!! Can't wait, just got to hope nature can make this event 'picture perfect' with a lovely clear sky :P

The exposure calculator is very useful too; thanks for the link to the related thread and here it is: http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/SolarEclipseExposure.html

Happy eclipse viewing to all

[bshaw77]

you don't need help with this ... you are already good !!!

[Scott_Martin]

How great was it?!? perfect viewing where I was at the Eclipse Festival.

Am really happy with my photos and thanks everyone for the tips, my practice and research paid off :)