Total Eclipse

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Friends of ours wanted to watch the eclipse and we all headed down to Toledo, Ohio for the show. Heavy traffic out of Michigan slowed our progress down and light overcast conditions created a sense of uneasiness as we headed east on Route 2 out of Oregon, Ohio. Maumee Bay State Park was closed due to crowded and packed parking areas. Onward we went and we noticed that a grade school parking lot had few people and plenty of room. A quick set up and had enough time to find some optimal settings . A thin cloud layer prevented me from getting more detail in the corona, but am pleased with the results from my first time at shooting a total eclipse of the sun.

Technical Details

Z9, 600mm f4 (1/640 sec at f5.6, ISO 1000) Levels, DeNoise, slight reducyion in highlights after setting black point, crop for comp.

3 Likes

Cool! Congrats!! I got it from Walnut Ridge, AR – VERY thin high clouds but got a usable set of exposures with tracking. The clouds will limit HDR processing but we’ll see. Now slogging our way home against headwinds – maybe back Thursday.

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Congratulations on your first eclipse! The prom on the right is great.
I had a lot of clouds in Dallas on the first part, but great views of totality through thin clouds. I had perfect conditions in 2017.

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Jim,

Congratulations on your first eclipse capture. I am glad some were able to capture it.

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Very nice, Jim. Interesting that your prominences didn’t quite line up with Diane’s, but then her totality was at a significantly different time.

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Thank you @Diane_Miller , @kyle , @Youssef_Ismail , @linda_mellor,and @Dennis_Plank . I was glad that I was able to witness this eclipse and get some photos of the event. Clouds thinned out enough to get a reasonable shot. The prominences were most interesting and I was surprised by their presence. I like the discussion about the prominences and they were very apparent during the 2 minutes of totality. This was an excellent learning experience and hope to see another in the future…Jim

Congrats, Jim. This is a fantastic shot, IMHO. Considering all of your last minute scrambling around, very nicely done,

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The prominence you got at ~4:00 must be that same one I got, but it is in a different stage of development. I’ve seen time-lapses of them but don’t know how fast they change in real time – I’ll ask a friend who does that sort of thing. We weren’t that far apart geographically and your shot here couldn’t have been more than a few minutes different from mine.

The way my camera was mounted on the tracker, it was at 90 degrees, with the base of the camera mounted on the dovetail bar and as the mount swung to the sun the grip (right end of the frame) was down. I did a 90 degree rotation but I’ll see if I can pinpoint the orientation more correctly. I should be able to get close from the C1 and C4 contact points. The Photographer’s Ephemeris simulation will show them at any geographic location.

Yeah, I was wondering about the variation between Jim’s and yours Diane. At first, I thought it was because of geographic location as I recall in 2017 seeing the corona images from places in the middle of the country or on the east coast rotated compared to my in Oregon. It’s the same effect that appears with the moon each night from it rising to when it is setting. But after your description of your camera orientation, I am wondering. Also, could the size of the prominence be related to exposure level?

@Youssef_Ismail, I’ve had a better look at my exposures and it looks like Jim caught this one closer to C2 than C3. I see the same less developed prominence in my first short exposure just after C2, but the one I posted was just before C3 – the thing developed that far in 3.5 minutes!! I’ll do some detail posts in a bit – almost done with a corona composite exposure, but still not quite dialed in optimally.

Nicely done. Interesting discussion about how the prominences evolved during totality.

Thanks, @DeanRoyer – I was amazed by that – I’ve seen time-lapse movies of them but with no idea what the real time frame was.