Once in a lifetime.. or maybe twice

As a child I vaguely remember going through a total solar eclipse as a kid of 8 or 9 in India. The local priest had said that the eclipse was specifically bad for my birth star of "rohini" and I had to be kind of quarantined.. or maybe it was my brother that got quarantined and I was in by association. Total solar eclipses meant folks stayed indoors and the ones whose birth star got a hit stayed 16 stories underground.. no I am kidding. They also stay indoors but get to cover their forehead with darbai grass (which apparently can absorb harmful radiation).. 

That was in those days. Last month I got another chance in this lifetime to "see" a solar eclipse that was spectacular. I had plans to even drive somwhere to see the totality, but my office did not plan for it. We had a meeting set for 10-noon. As a photographer, even if not Oregon, at least I wanted to go to some local mountaintop, set up the camera and go for some kind of time lapse composite shot. On a whim I took my camera bag with me.

When I went to work, we were in for a nice surprise. All of us got solar eclipse goggles and we were watching it from the parking lot. I just set up the camera in my office and took shots through the window.

everything looked unreal for those two hours. the colors on the trees and cars were so vivid ! 

Threw in all ND filters one on top of the other (ND2, ND4 and ND8) and it was still not enough! The sun is very powerful.. so I waited for clouds to cover the sun partially and got some shots! 

but the one above was with my iPhone! one of my colleagues pulled out his Huawei phone and got some amazing shots. That thing had a leica camera on it with shutter speed and aperture controls! I could not match those with the iPhone.. the 5D mark ii with a 70-200 and 2x extender.. that got some decent shots..

Was very happy to be able to see this. It was also a nice experience sharing this viewing with colleagues. Bunch of geeks enjoying an eclipse together!

Who knows, maybe time and space will be in my favor and will get to see an eclipse in totality in some part of the world sometime!

Was worried that in spite of the ND filters the lens would have been damaged. So far it seems to be okay on subsequent portrait shots!

Bloody eclipse..

One minute I am on an international call. Next minute there is a lot of commotion outside the house...

Turns out a large gathering of people in our neighbors driveway decided to watch the eclipse. Given the vantage point was a few steps from our house, decided to capture it right there.

The moon's redness was almost gone by the time I got set up..

Then the clouds moved away and got a series of shots which ended just a few minutes ago..

do click image to see the larger version.. 

It was fun catching this on our neighbors driveway and chatting with folks at the same time!

Eclipse

Not the best shots, but did start capturing the solar eclipse and had to give up in the middle.

Why?

The kids insisted on "bike riding as a family". So all four of us decided to ride a bike during the solar eclipse. It was interesting because we saw so many people in our street with video cameras on tripods and special glasses staring at the sun.

They probably all thought we were a weird family to go biking and ignoring a once in a lifetime event. Little did they know about my frustration.

People scared me about two things

1. Do Not look into the sun directly
2. Do not take pictures with the camera by trying to zoom into sun as it will damage your image sensor..

First I tried to cover the lens with some dark polythene. That created a large flare. Then decided to use my extender (which is a 2x) on my 70-200 mm f2.8 L (this is a 2000 dollar piece of glass) and initially San was giving me the look and saying "I hope you know what you are doing because you are not going to get any camera replacement money from this family!"

The thing becomes pretty bulky at this point, so a tripod is a must. (Incidentally, shot the hummingbirds kissing using this setup.. you can stay far enough from animals, birds and snakes and get shots with a 400mm setup as long as it is bright outside).

Now the extender puts the 200 f2.8 at 400 f5.6! Gets the sun pretty close. So I used a remote trigger and instead of staring at the sun directly, stared at it indirectly and took shots at 1/8000 seconds and f22 with an ISO set to 100. Pretty much pushed the exposure to bare minimum to get these shots. Also used a gap between branches in a tree to get the shots so that the Image sensor did not overload. Then cropped the images.

Next time there is a solar eclipse, going to leave home, hit the mountains and get some welders glass or the right polarizing and ND filter combinations and take photographs! (My CEO took some really neat shots using this method. He had to adjust the white balance. I didn't have to, but the effect is much better on his shots!)

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