u/tanlinePTZ

What a fantastic experience it was! Clear skies but pretty warm still. Warm enough to postpone taking the cameras out of the shadows for the final setup. This hacked a bit into the priority setting of enjoy first, shoot second. Fortunately everything was positioned, set and ready before the shadow swept in. The idea was to have one camera at 600mm (equivalent) recording video or interval photos as the zero-interference ‘guarantee-shot’. I opted for video and leaving the 16.6 nd on there all the time. That actually turned out pretty cool and is a nice scratch audio of all the excited oohs and aahs.

10 years ago a local observatory organised an event around a mercury transit. Seeing the prominences on the sun there was quite captivating. Only in the weeks leading up to this eclipse it became apparent to me that these can actually be photographed during the event. With this in mind the least-interference plan was to protect the highlights on the second camera and not get greedy on the zoom. Otherwise manual everything. And iso100 even if it meant rather risky exposure times. That would allow riding the magic of the moment with just a few turns to the camera to snap a photo.

When the shadow swept in so did the wow. What cascade of magic! In all the excitement I forgot the self timer on the first shot post filter removal. Never set a timer or kept track of where we were in the totality time frame, just lived it. So it happened that when the idea of a selfie together with the eclipsed sun came up, we shot it at the exact moment totality finished which I think is pretty cool :) Also I’m glad my partner took a wide shot of the scene, and her behind-the-scenes pictures with the crowd are great to have as well.

How the totality photos turned out is much more than I would have dared to dream of. Just wow! They are taken with a Nikon P1000 at 1800 and 1400mm equivalents. Using a 3d-printed tripod bracket from e-bay for mentioned camera, it was mounted on a budget geared tripod head. Used a 3-second self timer and sunny-weather wb. In post the WB and sharpness are tweaked but noise reduction left untouched. Other than this only one shot is pushed a bit for the corona. I think the prominence dream is fulfilled.. The size of that thing is unreal.

both photos taken at the Roques de García, Tenerife. [OC]

Someone took a liking in our menu

F10 iso100 546s

Decided to upgrade the kit with a screw-in ND100000 or 16.6 stop filter for the daytime long exposure play. It simplifies the setup process a lot from having to stack several and it keeps the lens hood available. An exposure time of 1/400s becomes approx 4m30s which gives a very nice range

Nikon p1000 with cpl. Quite rare to get a result this sharp at max tele. 1/800s, iso800 with lightroom noise remove applied