Solar Eclipse Photography Practice

Practice for the upcoming August 21 total solar eclipse. This session on Thursday, August 3, 2017 involved handheld captures and bracketing. My lens of choice for the event will be my Nikon AF Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 G lens. Although not creating a particularly large image of the sun's disk, it will hopefully allow for a good view of its corona during totality. For capturing the partial eclipse phases, I will use my 62mm Seymour Solar Helios solar filter. This is a front threaded filter.

For the partial phases I will capture the sun with my Nikon D7200 DSLR camera handheld. This is because in my opinion it is not as critical to capture minute clarity during this time, and finding the sun in the sky is quicker. I have discovered that locating the sun at 300mm focal length is more difficult than one might think! My focusing procedure is as follows: I autofocus on a distant sky object, such as a cloud or aircraft (infinity setting is rarely accurate). I then switch to manual focus and further secure the lens with a 3-4 inch strip of electrician's tape. After this is done, I will thread on the solar filter and attach the lens hood (Nikon HB-26).

The composite image seen above is from today's five-stop bracketing sequence of the sun. In manual mode, I set the shutter speed at 1/800 second, f stop at 5.6 and ISO 320. From left-to-right, the shutter speeds created from bracketing are 1/3200 sec, 1/1600 sec, 1/800 sec, 1/400 sec, and 1/200 sec. The larger sun is an HDR-created image of the five. Note the sunspot at left of the sun's disk.

For the totality phase the camera will be mounted on the tripod, sans filter. I plan to use the same f stop and ISO, but will change the shutter speed to accommodate the low light. A remote cord will be used.