WAITING FOR THE SHADOW SOLAR AND LUNAR ECLIPSE OBSERVING FUTURE EXPEDITION & EVENT PLANNING

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TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE, JULY 22, 2009

Eclipse photography for beginners So you're not an expert photographer. Maybe it's your first eclipse and you want to have some photo's as a memento. What do you do? We've all marvelled at the inspirational images of Miloslav Druckmueller, Fred Espenak and others. Should you try to take your own pictures or just borrow the work of the experts? I suggest you do a little of each. Eclipse photography is both very easy and very difficult. Very easy because, providing you take off the lens cap and solar filter, almost any exposure will show some sort of image of the corona. Difficult because to get superb results is a significant technical challenge. Here are three simple photographic projects that don't require anything more than a digital camera, film camera or videocam and will leave you most of the time to just enjoy the eclipse. The big problem is that solar corona contains a great variation in intensity from the inner corona to the outer corona. The brightness ratio from the inner to outer corona is about 13 photographic stops or 8000 : 1. But a typical digital sensor or film can only record a brightness ratio of about 100:1. Your eyes can adjust and adapt to an enormous range of intensities. So you can see it but you can't capture it on film or digital camera very easily. Wide angle atmospheric shot. Equipment : film camera, digital compact or digital SLR Take the widest-angle lens you have. Set the camera on a tripod. Set the camera to auto mode. Best results if you set the camera to Av mode and set the aperture to f5.6. Set the ISO to the lowest setting ISO100 or 200 depending on the camera. Compose on a tripod so that the Sun is near the top of the frame and if the lens is wide enough, there is just a thin strip of horizon along the bottom of the frame. For the 2009 eclipse from Shanghai, you will need a 28mm lens on a 35mm film camera and an 18mm lens on a DSLR to fit the sun and the horizon in the same shot because the Sun will be high in the sky during the eclipse.    Jalu, Libya March 29th 2006. The camp, located on the Great Sand Sea. In this shot taken at mid-totality, the eclipse was high in the sky. It wasn't quite as high as this years eclipse will be so I was able to use a standard lens. Sihouettes of our Arabian tents became my "Pyramids." Shot using a wide angle lens and auto exposure on Fuji Superior 100ASA 35mm colour negative film. Details not able to be recorded. The sky in Shanghai 2009 during will look a little like this - red crimson on the horizon, deep blue overhead unless pollution greys out the sky.  Jalu, Libya March 29th 2006. The camp, located on the Great Sand Sea. In this shot taken at mid-totality, the eclipse was high in the sky. It wasn't quite as high as this years eclipse will be so I was able to use a standard lens. Sihouettes of our Arabian tents became my "Pyramids." Shot using a wide angle lens and auto exposure on Fuji Superior 100ASA 35mm colour negative film. Details not able to be recorded. The sky in Shanghai 2009 during will look a little like this - red crimson on the horizon, deep blue overhead unless pollution greys out the sky.   Settings  DSLR  Compact Digital  Film SLR  ISO 200 Exposure Aperture auto Aperture Value f 5.6 Autofocus off Noise reduction ON     ISO lowest value Auto exposure Autofocus off if possible   ISO 200 Exposure Aperture auto Aperture Value f 5.6 Autofocus off       Gobi Desert, August 1st 2008. The Sun is only 14o above the horizon. Taken with a 35mm film camera with an 18mm lens (equivalent to a DSLR with a 12mm lens). The 2009 eclipse will look more like the top photo than this one. Handycam I've seen many videos of total eclipses, some taken with very expensive video cameras. I've never seen a single close up that looked any good. Imaging the corona with zoom will take a lot of time and effort and in my opinion isn't worth it. But here's an easy project that will leave you free to enjoy the eclipse and give you a guaranteed good result. Most video cameras do an excellent job of recording a very wide field view of an eclipse. If you can afford to, buy a screw on 0.5x wide-angle adaptor for an even better result. If not just set the lens to it's widest angle setting. Set the camera to manual focus, focus on infinity. Exposure to Auto. Set the camera on a tripod. If you set the video camera low to the ground on a tripod behind you then it records you, your reactions during the eclipse and the shadows moving across the sky. Once again the foreground will be dark and your figure will be in silhouette so don't waste too much of the frame with the foreground. The horizon line should just be a thin strip along the ground. Filling the frame with the sky will assist the camera's exposure system to expose the sky correctly. In Shanghai 2009, the Sun will be high in the sky, 57 degrees above the east horizon and the shadow will approach from the west you could film to the west to begin with then swing the camera around for the eclipse or just pick one. You might like to show some short shots before the eclipse and during the partial phases. You can buy an extra pair of eclipse shades, cut them in half and tape one to the camera as a make do solar filter. Just remember to bring the tape with you. Over the years, I've found it wastes a lot of time if you go shopping around for mundane things like tape or glue. Much easier to bring it with you. Start the continuous movie of totality about two minutes before the event. With an ultrawide angle lens, you won't need a solar filter.Enjoy the eclipse and the camera will do all the work for you. Don't forget to talk about your experience during the eclipse so that it gets onto the sound track.   Handheld Telephoto shot. So you've got a DSLR and a common 70-200mm f4 zoom lens but you don't want to bring a tripod. Relax. You can still take some perfectly good handheld snap shots. The corona has a wide brightness range. Eclipse photographers typically shoot one exposure at every shutter speed from 1/4000 to 4 or even 8 seconds. But this is for a special technique called stitching where all those exposures are combined. An exposure of 1/250s at f4 at ISO 200 will give you a pretty decent shot of totality. If I had to take just one exposure to show totality this would be the exposure. If your DSLR is a Sony, Pentax or Olympus you're in luck. Your camera has built-in image stabilization that works really well with any lens fitted to the camera and the image will be very steady and sharp. If it's a Canon or Nikon, then handheld at this shutter speed you'll get an acceptable image but it might be a little soft unless you have one of their special image stabilized lenses. To fix this, I've recommended a higher ISO for Canon / Nikon and a corresponding faster shutter speed to fix the deficiencies of Canon & Nikon camera bodies. The high ISO will result in more noise but it is probably the best compromise.              ISO 100 11/200s f4  ISO 100 1/125s f4   ISO 100 1/8s f4 Three single exposures of the corona. The quoted exposure values are what you would use for an f4 200mm lens rather than the actual exposures because these were originally taken with a 600mm lens at f8. The exposures quoted below will result in an image similar to the middle image above albeit with 1/3 the image size. Basically an all round pleasing result. Note that these images have been greatly reduced in size from the original 10MPx files.  Settings (Pentax, Olympus, Sony) ISO 200 Exposure manual 1/125s f5.6 lens 200mm Image stabilizer ON Autofocus might need to be turned off and manual focus used.  Settings (Canon, Nikon) ISO 400 Exposure manual 1/500s f4 lens 200mm Image stabilizer : Not available unless you have an image stabilized lens. Autofocus might need to be turned off and manual focus used.     Grab a photo or two using one of these methods, then put down the camera and make sure you take the time to enjoy one of natures great spectacles. Joe Cali

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