Everybody in the U.S. could see the Solar Eclipse in one fashion or another. From the West Coast to the East Coast, everybody saw at least a partial eclipse. For the lucky few (31 million or so) who live in the path of totality, they had the chance to view the total eclipse. Another “several” million visited those towns along the path of totality.
To read the whole series on my preparation for this event, these are the previous articles
Did you get a chance to see it? Did the weather work out for you? I was in Sheldon, Vermont, and up till the 7th, the weather reports were saying clear for the 8th. But! Mother Nature likes to stir things up. On the morning of the 8th, the weather reports now said that clouds would be moving in that afternoon. WTF!!!
Did any of you think about changing locations to get clearer skies? I spent the morning going back and forth, Lisa and I thought about moving to Newport, VT…
But in the end, we stayed in Sheldon and the clouds that came in were all high cirrus clouds. They really didn’t impact the viewing. Lisa and I also didn’t have to deal with the traffic which was the biggest problem that visitors had to deal with.
Ready or not, it was happening
I was out in the backyard where we all would gather later, and I set up a table for my gear. There was an outlet nearby so I could plug in my electronics, but it wasn’t needed.
I gave a countdown, and the family and neighbors all put their glasses on, and as I saw the moon creep over the sun, my shutter started clicking. I continued shooting for around 600 bracketed images. (more than 3,000 images recorded)
My set-up, as far as equipment
I used a Canon 80D with a Sigma 100-400mm and a Sigma 2x tele-extender. this gives me 800mm but with the crop factor, I’m at 1280mm. I pushed my ISO to 1250 and left it there for the duration. What I didn’t really notice until I was halfway through was that while my minimum aperture was originally (with the 100-400mm by itself) was f5, when I added the 2x tele-extender my min f-stop was now f13.
I was working my manual settings and couldn’t figure out why my aperture would not open any further when the lightbulb came on and I then realized I could only modify my shutter speed to change my brackets (I also could have changed my ISO but the 80D is noisy enough so I didn’t play with that.
My best purchase for this event was my Manfrotto XPRO 3-Way, Geared Pan-and-Tilt Head.
I don’t love the spring-clamp controls which usually means they lock in above/below or to the left/right of the subject. What I absolutely loved is, that once you have the spring-clamp control locked you use the integrated twist knob that allows incremental, geared adjustments. Meaning that once you are close you can slide over the subject with a twist of the knob and with the sun constantly moving I could easily twist a couple knobs and keep the sun in the center.
Processing, Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz
Getting home, I imported everything into Lightroom. I won’t bore you too much, but in general, here are my processing steps.
- Find the middle bracket shot (averaged)
- Go to the basic panel and raise the temp to 8750 (approx)
- Drop the blacks to -30, clarity to +50, Dehaze to +44
- Raise the Saturation to +25, then go to Color Mixer
- Take the eye dropper and sample 1/3 in from the edge and move the hue shift +30
- Go into detail and run Denoise and set the amount you like, 69% is my setting
Now I could run the 5 bracketed shots out to Photoshop and merge to HDR I also, in some cases, send the image to Topaz for sharpening/removing noise if the image requires more attention than Lightroom’s Denoise (good for light applications)
My First Time Results
I don’t think I did too badly, considering this was my first/last Solar Eclipse. It’s most likely my last since I’m 65 and the next big eclipse that crosses the majority of the US will happen in 2045 (I’ll be 86), and while I like to think I’ll both be here and sound enough of mind to operate a camera. I think I’ll be just happy to sit and look through my glasses at a final partial eclipse, but oh, to see such a sight once again, that would be such a sight to see, Mister Frodo… (to kind of quote Tolkien)
I would love to see all of your results if you managed to get out into the path of totality. Put a link to your images in the comments.
Jeff “Foliage” Folger
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