The Great Solar Eclipse

Mon, Aug 21, 2017

Today’s the big day and we have clear skies here in Redmond, OR for the 9:06 AM start.

I’ve been practicing by shooting the sun the past few days.  Been playing with exposure, settings, etc and at different times of the day.  But the morning is where it’s at and I’ve settled on 1/1000 sec, ISO 200 and f8.

I’m shooting my Nikon D800, 200mm f2 lens coupled to my TC-20E III teleconverter giving an effective 400mm focal length.  This is a full frame camera but I’ll be shooting in DX mode to reduce the file size since all of the shots will be cropped anyway.  I used a Baader solar filter that’s known for sharpness.

The sun has a solar cycle in which the sun spot activity varies from its minimum to maximum.  The period is 11 years and unfortunately we’re right at the minimum.  So I was pleased to see some sun spots since there weren’t any a few days ago.

I took ten photos showing the progression of the eclipse.  The sun’s natural color is white but I’ve colored it yellow to give a more pleasing image.  Here they are:

 

Sorry no pictures of totality but it was spectacular and eerie at the same time.  Can’t wait to see it again.