Re: Ecipse Photography

(used to be) Fat Sam wrote:
Hi,
With the upcoming total solar clipse on August 1st in mind, I was wondering if anyone has any tips or advice on how best to photograph an event like this?
What should I be aware of? Safety considerations both for myself and my camera equipment alike? And any special tricks or techniques to get the best from the experience?

I'm assuming a long lens, small apperture and very fast shutter will be vital?

Not really. Go to flickr, search for "solar eclipse" and look at the exifs of the various pictures.

Presumably no need for a tripod?

The good thing with a tripod is that you can do some long burst shooting. The full eclipse itself is pretty short (depending of course on where you are respective to the shadow path).

But how does one frame up and focus the shot, given that it's ridiculously dangerous to look directly at the sun, especially through a lens that focuses the rays?

Focus is at infinity, so that one is easy. For the framing, if you are looking though a LCD screen (rear display or electronic viewfinder) this is a non-issue. If you are using a tripod, you can put some dark enough stuff in front of the lens while you frame and remove it for the shoot.
In any case, you will be wearing eclipse glasses, of course, so you can look in your viewfinder through them...


--
Bertrand
.

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