Solar Eclipse - From California

[Chris Dodkin]

Today started with a trip to my local telescope store - OPT in Ocenaside CA.

I was 30 mins ahead of their opening time, but there were already 2 people in line at the door!

By the time the doors opened at 12, there were over 100 people lined up!

I was able to secure enough Eclipse shades for the family, and also a solar filter for my 600 f4

The filter is a mylar material, providing sufficient filtering to allow the camera to look directly at the sun without damage to sensor or eye.

It does't matter that the filter material is wrinkled apparently - this solar viewing is weird stuff!


As the Eclipse approached, we were socked-in with fog at the coast so we drove 45 mins inland to Dual Peaks Park (1600') where we found a growing number of astronomers and eclipse watchers.

There were some serious telescopes being used

And I discovered the guy next to me (Bill) was from Blighty!

Bill had a solar viewer scope, and a HUGE telescope - the solar scope had a Nikon camera on it - and the telescope had a Canon DSLR taking a shot every 5 sec for a future animated movie of the event..

The crowd grew as the time for the eclipse drew near

And then, at around 5:30, the eclipse began

Using the 600 f4 L and 2 x (total 1200mm) with the solar filter, you can see the disc of the sun, some sunspots, and the moon starting to move in front of the sun.

As the eclipse progressed, I took a panoramic using the X-Pro1

Eclipse shades were essential for viewing the event

The eclipse progressed towards sunset

We didn't get the 'ring of fire' at our latitude - this was the maximum occlusion

Very cool to watch - and shoot.

Cameras used X100, x-Pro1 and 5DII

 

[Brian Moore]

I forgot about it! But as I was sitting watching a recording of today's last stage of the Tour of California I recall thinking that the light from the late afternoon sky was different this evening. It looked a little peculiar seeping in through the windows. Thanks for posting these images, Chris. You've done a great job of documenting the celestial event.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Great stuff Chris ... I knew you would come through with somthing interesting for us!
The shots of the sun are spot on! Was it difficult using the filter?
I really like the pano with the xpro too, that's turne out a treat I think!

So is Bill gonna come show us his animation when he has put it together?
Is he using a d4??

 

[Dave Green]

This is a superb set of photos! Good to see the actual people and the event documented rather than just the sun shots!

 

[Glen Roberts]

Some great shots of the event, especially the Silhouettes of the guys with the 'scopes.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Wonderful post. I'm going to share it on Facebook. Great shots and good reporting. Thanks, Chris. The pano shot is one of the best I've seen.

 

[Lesley Jones]

Thank you so much for documenting this and sharing it with us. The panorama and the silhouettes are stunning!

 

[Lesley Jones]

I can't edit the above post, but I wanted to say some more images are appearing (my connection is very slow). I love the queue outside and the mass of people inside with the blurred child in the foreground.

 

[Mark Grant]

Excellent photos, what makes it for me are the photos of all the people around rather than just sun photos.

 

[Pete Askew]

What a superb set to document the even Chris. When we had a full eclipse in the UK about 15 years ago I used a 600 mm Sigma lens with a 3x converter to project the image of the sun onto a sheet of card held perpendicular to it. We could watch the relatively dim image on that showing some sunspots etc as the eclipse progressed. I have some pictures of it all somewhere (B&W film).

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Thanks everyone!

It was a lonnnng day, but I'm glad that everything came out ok.

The X100 was superb for shooting the morning stuff at the telescope store - no-one really noticed the camera, and I was able to either shoot from the hip (initial shot of 2 people in line), or using the LCD - and get a slice of the 'action' - people were excited but also a little pushy, as OPT only had 300 pairs of the eclipse shades left. They sold out before they served everyone in line

For the shoot itself, the solar film was just the strangest stuff - looked like reflective balloon material - had no idea about exposure or focus with it on, so I set it up on the full sun initially with manual exposure and manual focus at infinity.

Ended up needing ISO800 to get a good high shutter speed and decent aperture - and then shot images in bursts of 3, with +/- 2 stop auto exposure bracketing.

Used a cable release on the 5D2, and Live View mode to lock up the mirror and try and keep the rig stable in the gimbal mount - slight breeze didn't help!

The Sun/Moon were of course always moving - so I had to keep adjusting the lens position to track.

I'm not happy with the final focus - and wish I'd tried the Live View AF on a few to see if it would have worked. It failed on the Lunar Eclipse I shot, but that was much dimmer. Focus is a real issue, and I've yet to really crack it I think.

Will try again for the Venus transition on June 5th if I can get away to shoot it. (3pm)

The X-Pro1 proved to be great for the pano shots - I set it up in portrait mode after seeing Darren do this in his Welsh panos last week. I used the Induro tripod and head, which has a nice pano feature - so after leveling everything up, I could smoothly pan the Fuji right to left to get the full shot. I fitted an ND grad, and positioned it by eye to help balance the bright sky/Sun a little.

I shot several panos and varied the exposure by as much as -2 stops, as exposure was extremely difficult to judge over the whole pano area, especially with the sun in frame for some of the shooting.

Pano was straight out of the camera JPEG, Velvia mode - will head up to the same spot for a sunset shot another time I think!

I then used the X-Pro1 and X100 to shoot the folks and the telescopes on the hillside. The X-Pro handled the silhouettes really nicely, and after taking the shots, I noticed a local press photog was proceeding to take the same shots!

I sent Bill copies of a couple of pics of him and his scopes - and of course mentioned RPF to him on the day - will send him a link and see if we can get a look at his shots and animation. He had several Nikons Hamish, including the D4 I think (not up on my Nikon spotting).

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Here's the shot the local press guy took - San Diego Union Tribune

Clearly his Canon 1D wasn't able to nail the shot as well as my X-Pro1!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Crap. Yours are better by far...

 

[Ralph Thornton]

Great post Chris. We used a small telescope to project an image of the eclipse onto a sheet of paper. Unfortunately the sky was cloudy most of the time. Got to actually see the sun for only about 10 minutes well before maximum. Thanks for sharing your photos.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Thanks Ralph - at one point I was unsure as to the availability of the solar filter, so was planning to build a pinhole device to view the eclipse.

When I did my research I found that to get a decent sized image on the Sun, I'd need a 6 foot long box!

I was all ready to head to Home Depot for some plastic waste pipe, and had plans to build a 12' solar tube that I'd assemble on-site with duct tape

Go big or go home!

 

[Ronald Atchley]

Absolutely great stuff !! Thank you for posting this.
I swear in the lower left of your panorama is the starship
Enterprise and the scene was MADE for it
THe first of the sillouettes is way past good. To me it is litterally a
"money shot"
Thanks again for posting these.
Ron

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Thanks Ron - finally someone spotted the spaceship!

 

[Brian Moore]

Spaceship,...? Oh,...must go back and have a peek. Hod oan...

...Back noo.

Saw it! That's not the saucer we sighted you in a coupla weeks ago. You musta traded in/upgraded.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Faster model Brian