How to Photograph the Eclipse on April 8th, 2024

hey everyone Forest here with Rocky Mountain School of Photography and today we are going to do a deep dive on how to photograph the eclipse we're going to talk about where to shoot it what equipment you need different exposure settings different image options how an eclipse works really a broad Strokes overview on the entire process I also want to say that all of the equipment that I'm mentioning in this video is linked down in the description below and definitely stick around till the end cuz I'm going to give you the exact exposure settings that worked for me when I shot the eclipse back in 2017 and that I plan to use again this year very important disclaimer we are going to be talking about pointing our camera at the sun with long lenses there are a ton of ways that you can seriously permanently damage your camera equipment and permanently damage and blind yourself doing this so first and foremost I'm not taking any responsibility for what you do with your camera however I'm going to give you some best practices in this video on how to keep yourself safe but here's what I would do before you point your camera at the sun with with any filtration do your own research be sure that what you're doing is backed up by multiple sources and that you're doing things as safely as possible there is a very safe way to do this but there's also a lot of ways to really hurt yourself or your camera gear so do your research don't take what I say as the end all be all answer be responsible be smart before you point your camera at the Sun a particularly with a long lens finally this is going to be a little different this is more of a lecture Style video versus a standard YouTube video so sit back relax we're going to do a deep dive and really help you understand what's involved with photographing this pretty epic event let's dive in so first let's start with the wi and wear this eclipse is going to run through Mexico the United States and a little bit of Canada and it's going to be on April 8th of 2024 the reason I'm doing this video now is it gives us a few months to practice get equipment and get the whole idea figured out before it's actually Eclipse day and that's going to be a general theme of this video is practicing now I do want to point out NASA has created this beautiful map um there's a link in the description to download and check it out yourself but this goes into where you can see totality where you can see a partial eclipse what that means we'll get into in a second but basically know that this dark band across the United States is going to be where the best viewing of the eclipse happens in fact if you're not in this band you might not even know that an eclipse is happening the sun is so bright and even if it's mostly uded by the Moon it still almost feels like full daylight so if you're not in that dark band I definitely recommend planning a trip to go to that area if you want to get the best experience with the eclipse so what can we expect to photograph I have a few example images that I shot back in 2017 that I think are a really good kind of holistic example of what you can expect this is kind of the image most people think of when they think of a full solar eclipse um this was shot with a 60D uh 360 mm lens that I cropped in and I have the settings here as well I tried to make that a theme throughout this entire video presentation uh the different settings that I used in these different situations so this was taken at totality this is only possible this photo is only possible if you are in that dark band on the United States Canada or Mexico this is sometimes called the diamond ring effect okay this as well as only possible inside of that dark band and I guess a little bit outside of it another diamond ring example here this is showing some of those solar prominences the little red uh solar flares coming off the outside of the sun this is a par eclipse and you can see very little bit of the sun is covered up by the moon we'll talk more about why this all happens here but this would be an image that you would be capable of getting even if you're not in that dark band um as well as something like this a partial eclipse okay also you can play with multiple images and shooting sequences that tell the story of the eclipse from the beginning to the end and there's also ways to do this in a kind of a wide field way as well so this is what we're going to break down today how does this process work what's involved what does it feel like on Eclipse day and what should we be focusing on in order to do it so I want to start by explaining a little bit about what a solar eclipse is because I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there so basically a solar eclipse is caused when the Sun's light is blocked by the Moon the Moon comes in front it comes between the Sun and the Earth and that blocks the light and it casts a shadow on the earth it's a pretty cool effect and the area that's in full Shadow is called the Umbra that's where that dark band is across the United States and this is where you can see a total eclipse a total blocking of the Sun the area in partial Shadow is called the penumbra this is where you can see a partial eclipse and most of the United States is in a partial eclipse zone so here's a little diagram kind of showing that we can see uh the moon blocking the light from the sun and that little band in full Shadow is the Umbra and then the pun Umbra is all that extra space around it so it's pretty easy in a eclipse to be in the penumbra it's not as exciting you only get partial coverage but that Umbra that's the part that's super super cool and what we've all seen now I do like to kind of tell everybody what's required by the whole situation in order for the sun to fully eclipse and the first thing is that from a perspective of the viewer the Sun and the Moon need to be aligned okay so this really only happens at New Moon times um and there's got to be a perfect alignment there also the moon needs to be at its closest or near its closest point to the Earth in its orbit also sometimes known as perige um perige is means that the moon is closer to the Earth which means it appears bigger and it needs to be closer because in order to block the sun completely it has to be at its closest point you guys may remember in 2023 we had an anular eclipse and an annular eclipse is when everything else works out except the Moon is a little bit too far away from Earth that the best the eclipse gets is a little ring a little so solar ring around the Moon the Moon does not completely block the Sun's light now I want to talk a little bit about the different types of eclipses so this is kind of going to be what you can expect to see from where you live so like I said already a partial eclipse is viewable through most of the United States most of Canada most of this side of the earth uh during Eclipse time um basically the Moon is only going to partially cover the Sun and this is what you can expect in that penumbral Shadow Zone like I said all the United States is going to have something a partial eclipse on April 8th assuming that it's clear and you can see the sky and this is what it's going to look like to a varying degree of success now you're not going to see this without filters don't look at the Sun and that's a big disclaimer I'm going to have throughout this video is filtration there's a lot of ways to damage your eyes damage your camera equipment without doing this properly so um I want to just say filtration is key um and that's going to be something we get to in the end here uh that's really important the second type of eclipse is a total eclipse and this is the coolest part okay um this is where the moon completely blocks the Sun and we are able to see this beautiful kind of Corona of the Sun the solar atmosphere it's an amazing time those of you who've seen this before it's an amazing event even with your eyes you look up at the Sun the sun's not there it's a black circle there's like atmosphere it's an amazing amazing experience so again I want to hammer home if you can get to that path of totality is what it's called that dark band through the United States Canada and Mexico do it because it's really really truly one of those experiences that you will never forget for your entire life you'll be super hyped up about it and you can get very cool photographs but in order to get this in order to make feel that whole thing you have to be in that band dark band in the United States Mexico and Canada okay now let's talk a little bit about how the process works I think kind of the workflow is important to discuss next so what we like to say is the Sun is just like the sun any other day on Eclipse day um until the first thing happens and the first kind of section of an eclipse is what we would call First Contact and first Contact is where you can first start to see the moon blocking part of the sun okay it's the first stage of the eclipse and this is when the moon just begins to olude the Sun or cover the Sun and basically the sun just looks like Po a part of it is missing um now I want to say you do need filtration to safely View first Contact you can't just point your camera up this is where the filters are on the lens you're being careful here's a quick example of what first Contact looks like we can see here's the sun it looks like a big orange blob and in the upper leftand corner we have a little bit of the Moon covering it up note that I do have an ND 100,000 filter on my camera for this picture because I don't want to burn out my sensor or my eyeballs so there's my settings here on kind of what I used also note that I did crop this in quite a bit the one 40 mm lens on the xt2 with a 1.4 extender plus some cropping got me this field of view so as you watch it right and this also means get some goggles for your eyes too so you can watch this but you'll watch that sun slowly start to get covered up covered up covered up more by the moon and that process continues until you hit what's called second contact now second contact enters the SEC is the second stage of the eclipse and it's when the moon begins to fully the Sun so the sun begins to get fully blocked this is the start of totality right if you're in the path of totality and this is also where we need proper filtration until the sun is completely covered we have to have filters on our cameras and our eyes to keep everything safe now do note second contact will not happen unless you are in that predetermined section of the country here's an example of what second contact looks like this is also sometimes called the diamond ring effect there's lots of different names for it uh but again it's where the moon starts to fully cover the sun after second contact we have what's called totality this is where the coolest part happens we can see the corona um this is the third stage of the eclipse the Moon is fully blocking the Sun and we're able to see stars we're able to see the sun's Corona Birds think it's nighttime it's an amazing amazing experience all right now here's the thing you do not need filtration for your eyes or your camera to photograph or look at this phase of the eclipse but be careful this only lasts a couple minutes we're talking 2 minutes 2 minutes 30 seconds depending how close to the center of that path of totality you are as soon as it's over you got to put the glasses back on and you got to put the filter back on your lens so it's really just for a couple minutes you can remove the lens filter and start shooting and get those totality shots Okay and like I said lasts about 2 minutes and 30 seconds depending on how close to the center of that path of totality you're on here's an example of an image of totality right we can see and notice no filter here also there is a huge we're going to talk exposure in a little bit but there's a huge difference in brightness between the darkest part and the brightest part of the solar atmosphere the moon all the different parts of this image so you'll notice I say bracketed HDR this is really an important part of the process to bracket your exposure from Bright to dark on Third Contact is our fourth stage of the eclipse it's when all of a sudden the moon has moved past the Sun and we're able to start seeing the Sun's light again um this is the end of totality again totality lasting there for about 2 minutes something like that okay again we need filtration here and then I'll go quickly fourth contact is marking the end of the eclipse um this is where really the the eclipse is over and the moon stops secluding the Sun and again we would need filtration for this and the sun returns to a normal State Okay so that's how this works um really it's a pretty quick process I like to think about it as really about 2 3 4 hours going from start to finish from uh setting up your gear photographing everything getting through totality getting through the end of the eclipse and if you are interested in getting a shot like this you do need to shoot for the whole time right you want a shot from first Contact to Fourth contact and everything in between so you do need to keep your gear set up in order to get those shots that kind of span the duration uh but we we're talking a few hours here now the next section I want to get into is equipment and this is pretty important I do recommend ordering your gear early I've left links down in the description to kind of my favorite gear uh but this stuff was hard to find in 2017 particularly if you waited until the last minute so couple quick discussions here first is lenses with lenses really it's deciding how much cropping you want to have to do um most of us are probably going to be shooting with a 70 to 200 mm lens but I do want to say if you have a t scope or something very long or a 2X tele extend or and a 600 mm who knows I don't know what you all have um if you want just the sun the sun will fill the frame at about 2,000 mm that's when you'll have a sun perfectly filling your field of view and you won't have to do any cropping but you also have enough to get the whole thing in the frame so anything beyond that you're going to be taking partial sun photos now when I say 2,000 mm I'm talking about effective focal length so if you put a 200 mm lens on a crop sensor camera I would be calling that a 300 mm lens effective focal length not actual focal length so 2,000 mm effective focal length is going to be your maximum if you want the sun and the corona the cool solar kind of atmosphere um then you're going to want to keep your focal length under a thousand and again that's effective focal length so you don't really want to go longer than that but I do want to say if all you have is a 70 to 200 that's great if you can get a 1.4x telecon converter that will help quite a bit or even a 2X telecon converter that's going to help a lot it's just going to mean that you have to do a little bit of cropping um the longest lens I used for any of the photos in this Frame was a 350 mm so I wasn't like coming in super super close it was a 350 mm lens with a crop sensor camera and a little bit of cropping and you know happy day it all works out I do want to say though that a telescope is a very cheap way to get longer focal length so if that's something you're interested in do look at some telescope reviews out there telescopes are also great for nighttime astrophotography so they can be a good investment into this genre of photography of pointing your camera up to the sky um and they're a lot cheaper per millimeter of focal length than a lens I do want to point out Fred espac uh also known as Mr Eclipse Mr eclipse. comom um he has created quite the database of information on eclipses he's photographed many eclipses through the years and he made this chart that I think is really useful to kind of see how focal length affects the the field of view around the Sun so definitely check out his website he has a lot of great information that dives a little deeper into this I'll leave a link to that in the description as well now I want to talk a little bit about cameras so I actually don't think this matters too much really any mirrorless or DSLR camera is going to do a really nice job um because focal L's important though you might consider a crop sensor camera or a very high megapixel full-frame camera that you can then crop in post- production um that's totally fine as well uh there's going to be a lot of available light here we're not really pushing the limits of our cameras even with these filters we have a ton of light so high ISO performance is not going to be as important even if you have a slightly older camera it's going to be able to do a great job in this situation I would almost recommend bringing a few cameras to so you can get some wide shots some medium shots some tight shots um of this event and who cares how old the camera is you're still going to have multiple cameras to cover such a cool thing the biggest thing I can say is get it camera or use a camera that you're comfortable with particularly during totality it's a very stressful event um it can be so take your time use a camera that you know backwards and forwards so that when you're changing settings very quickly you've already know what to expect also I can say practice this stuff we can practice ahead of time the sun's going to be no different now than it is on Eclipse day except for totality that's kind of the event that's different but first Contact second contact Third Contact and fourth contact the sun's the same brightness through all of those phases of the eclipse as it will be today if it's a clear day that you're watching this so just keep that in mind you can practice this stuff ahead of time and honestly I would like I said there's a lot of stress that can go into this situation and my goal when I was shooting in 2017 and if I can make it out to shoot this year is going to be to enjoy the eclipse I don't want to be worrying about my camera equipment all right let's talk the most important thing solar filters okay if you're going to photograph any stage of the eclipse except for totality you need a solar filter okay once you get the filter you can actually use it to photograph the sun any old day you don't have to just use it for an eclipse so it's actually a good investment there's sometimes sunspots prominences cool things on the sun and it's nice to be able to take images of those most solar filters can be had for between about $50 even cheaper than that for some up to about $150 there's also some filters that can do narrow band Imaging of the Sun and those cost well over $1,000 but they can also be had for very cool Unique Images there are also dedicated telescopes that do a lot of the filtration for you and can provide very unique views of the sun this is not something that I'm a particular expert in nor have I done except for once or twice so I'm definitely not the resource there but if you look up solar photography on YouTube You're Going to find tons of people who do this on a day-to-day basis not just during Eclipse time and they can really explain this gear and how to do that process so if that interests you it might make sense to buy a more expensive filter that's capable of doing that because you can use it after the fact even not just for Eclipse day the final thing that I want to say is don't forget to buy goggles for your eyes this is so important you want to be able to see it with your eyes as well even just working on your camera aiming your camera looking up to the sky you want to keep your eyes safe I believe B&H has solar goggles uh for sale for about 10 15 bucks for a pack of five they're very affordable so get yourself a set of goggles have those with you do be very careful with them uh those goggles and some of the filters are made of what's called myar which is a very delicate material and even a little pin prick hole can let a lot of light in and can damage your eyes or damage your camera so do be really careful treat these filters very delicately remember they are the only thing between your eyes and and the Sun and that can cause a lot of damage so there's two real types of solar filters we have visible light filters and hydrogen Alpha filters so visible light filters are going to let you take photos like this you can see the sun it kind of looks like a giant Orange right the fruit we've got some sun spots on it and all it's doing is it's blocking about 16 stops of light from getting to your sensor visible light filters basically allow all of the light to come through it just dims it all down by 16 stops which is a lot but it's just light blocking that's all it's really doing they work perfectly but they don't really provide that interesting of a view you compare this to what's called a hydrogen Alpha filter and hydrogen Alpha filters block a lot of light except for very specific wavelengths very specific colors of light and these allow you to see more surface detail on the sun more prominence detail um a lot more interesting information and like I said there are hydrogen Alpha telescopes as well that the filtration is built into the telescope not into a filter so it's makes it a little bit easier to fit things out get a little bit better image quality so on and so forth these are more of a long-term investment like I said that can be used for years to come to photograph surface details on the sun before investing in one of these I would definitely a look up what's involved the learning curve with using one um like I said I've owned one before I've used it a couple times but it wasn't something that I really saw the time investment value in it wasn't a hobby I wanted to get into but there's some people out there who do amazing jobs with these filters again here's a side-by-side comparison you can see on the left visible light kind of just seeing some darker spots and then in hydrogen Alpha we're seeing a lot more surface detail so let's get to the specifics the basic filter I would recommend most of you buy to shoot the eclipse would be a simple myar solar film filter okay this is the simplest and cheapest option uh they cost about $15 to $20 they're made of myar um and it's not going to be as durable or last quite as long you're probably only going to get one Eclipse out of it a couple shoots out of it but they're real simple they're actually made of cardboard most of them all you you do is take a ruler measure the size the diameter of the front of your lens and you get a size that will fit over your lens it doesn't have to be perfect the myar film actually will have some um some kind of like Wess to it it's not going to affect your image quality it's just the way that milar works and again like I said they're only about $20 so I really recommend even if you're not going to travel to the path of totality it's still a cool thing to be able to take a picture of the sun with it covered up by the moon even partially so I would def invest in one of these for $15 to $20 just so on Eclipse day you can have a cool experience and get to take a cool photo that you can't take any other time stepping up to the intermediate level we have a glass n d filter now glass n d filters I want to make something very clear are not for visual use you do not want to use these and then look through an optical viewfinder so if you have a DSLR and you want to look through your viewfinder on your DSLR buy yourself a myar filter not a glass n d filter glass n D filters are fine for photographic use but with your eyes they don't provide necessary protection what you're looking for is an ND 100,000 or a 16 stop ND filter that's the recommended density to protect your gear some people like to ask me well what about if I stack a bunch of other ND filters together and you can definitely do that but just remember every filter you stack is another layer of glass you're shooting through so you're going to reduce your sharpness your contrast and your overall image quality these are a lot more durable however than a myar filter and the image quality is generally going to be a little bit better so if you are looking for more of a long-term investment filter this can be good the other nice thing about an ND 100000 filter is it's good for just general purpose work if you're in a bright sunny day and you want to get a very long exposure of a waterfall or of the ocean things like that this can be a great way to do it so even for daytime work just like terrestrial photography these can be a good investment generally these are about $1 to $125 again I've provided a link in the description to one that I recommend finally we get to the professional hydrogen Alpha filters and I'm not going to go too in-depth on these but if you are looking to really get into it this would be the most advanced way to shoot the eclipse however these come with their own quirks and features don't buy one of these get it delivered the day before the eclipse and expect to use it during the eclipse they're just not built for that honestly these are better I think for non- Eclipse situations but they can be used for the eclipse as well this is going to give you the best view it's going to show you the most detail on the sun all of that but again when totality rolls around you're actually going to take the filter off and these are kind of a pain to take off so all little things to consider these also cost over $1,000 all right I want to remind you you do not need a filter to shoot images like these four none of these four Images were filtered now the two top ones those are diamond ring that's where the the sun is just starting to peek out behind the moon at that moment I shot a few shots and immediately put the filter back on the camera because those are kind of on the verge right you're starting to get some sunlight directly into your lens so you want to be a little bit cautious there but none of the four of these had solar filtration on them another thing you may want to consider purchasing for the eclipse would be a tracking Mount of some kind now astrophotographers you probably already have one great use it it's awesome to use for the eclipse basically what it's going to happen is the Sun is going to be moving and if you don't have a tracking Mount you're going to point your camera at the Sun and very quickly the Sun is going to move out of the frame you're going to lose it there so what this tracker does is it's going to take care of this for you it's going to keep the sun centered in your camera throughout the duration of the eclipse now trackers are aligned to the north Celestial pole in the northern hemisphere which is called the north star or Polaris so what I actually did was uh in 2017 I set up my tracker the night before I pointed it at the North Star I turned it all off and I let it sit until the morning in the morning I put my camera gear on it I turned it on and boom it was aligned at the North Star that we couldn't see anymore cuz it's daytime so that's a way to do it you also can get your tracking Mountain just aligned roughly North pointed at the right degree height of the Northstar and you'll be close it's going to be close enough it's going to help a lot compared to manually moving your camera all the time but this can be a great way to make your life a little bit easier not have to worry as much about things on Eclipse day and like I said these are also great for astrophotography so if you are into shooting galaxies nebula things like that this is a great investment longterm too a couple that I recommend the basic option would be the I optron Sky guider EQ this is a fantastic little Mount um provides some basic tracking and this is actually what I used in 2017 it worked perfectly and the only really kind of disadvantage of this is if you are going to use it for Astro photography it does have a limited payload capacity it can't hold a big heavy rig definitely check the spec sheet on your own to see whether you think your rig will work um it also doesn't have what's called go-to functionality go-to means on more advanced mounts you can kind of key in like go to whatever object like the sun and it will actually point it at the Sun for you so it's a nice convenience feature this does not have that but it's only about $400 and for $400 the performance and the ease of use it's going to give you and ability to grow into astrophotography is pretty cool one step up from that would be the skywatcher star Adventure GTI uh this is going to do the same thing except it does have go-to and it can handle a slightly heavier rig so this would be like a long-term investment if you were really going to get into solar photography Andor asttr photography this would be a good place to start um it's phenomenal this one does cost $600 however so you are making more of an investment one other piece of equipment that I want to mention is a cable release or an Interval Timer with filtration on and particularly during totality our exposure in our shutter speed is going to be fairly slow so one thing you're going to want to be able to do is fire your camera without pushing the shutter button so I would definitely have a cable release or self timer to remotely trigger your camera wireless or wired is great just some way to push a button not on your shutter and not introduce Shake into the camera system all right let's talk about exposure now this is going to be a little bit challenging and I I want to tell you what I'm going to give you today are guidelines so definitely check your own histogram check your own EXP exposure on Eclipse day practice ahead of time but here's what worked for me here are a few notes number one this is going to be one of the biggest challenges I think really everything else in the eclipse and shooting it is fairly straightforward exposure though if you mess it up you can get photos that literally don't work so really really try to get it perfect next thing is practice ahead of time like I said first Contact second contact Third Contact and fourth contact are all going to be the same exposure as today if you go outside and you look at the sun the exposure exposure will be the same today as it is through first second third and fourth contact so practice ahead of time also remember that totality is going to differ greatly from first Contact so first second third fourth contact versus totality are completely different ball games totality is all its own special thing we'll talk about that in just a minute I also want to point out that the Corona's brightness the corona is like the cool atmosphere of the Sun that you see in totality shots is a million times darker than the surface of the Sun itself so we need to do a lot of exposure and filtration adjustments to go from Third Contact and second contact into that totality mode another recommendation I want to give is turning on auto bracketing through everything bracking is where you can tell your camera to shoot three stops under perfect and three stops Overexposed every time you hit the shutter button once it's a safety net I would really recommend doing it unless you know your exposures are perfect but there's not really a downside to Auto bracketing in situations like this you know you want to get the shot you know you have your exposure close but you f I figure might as well take an extra shot on either side a little brighter and a little darker just to be safe now I'm going to separate my exposure recommendations between filtered and unfiltered exposures so let's go ahead and dive into that so with a filter we're talking about shooting from first Contact to Second contact and Third Contact to Fourth contact my filtered exposure and again this is assuming using a myar filter or an ND 100,000 filter also known as a 16 stop ND filter my go-to exposure was f5.6 at 1/ 1000th of a second at ISO 200 now again test it yourself but this worked for me in 2017 and it was pretty consistent across multiple filters and multiple cameras now do remember if you want to go to f8 feel free Just Adjust another setting to compensate so maybe go to ISO 200 or 1 1500th of a second again practice your filtered exposures ahead of time because you can no filtered shots are going to be totality and diamond ring okay again don't push diamond ring too long in either direction make sure you get that filter on quickly but you can take a couple shots when the sun just starts to peek out this is going to be where we have Bracken on my darkest EXP exposure that I used again this is no filter on the camera the darkest that I needed to go and this was dark enough to get detail in all the parts of the sun around where the moon was covering it up I went down to f5.6 at 1 18,000 of a second at ISO 800 now again any variety of that will work fine you go to ISO 400 at 1/ 14,000 of a second any variety of this is fine but this was as dark as I needed to go to get detail in the brightest parts of totality the brightest IE wi and this is really important because you want to get all that solar atmosphere all of the corona was f5.6 one8 of a second at ISO 800 so the reason I chose ISO 800 was so that at the brightest my shutter speed didn't get too slow if I had shot this whole sequence at ISO 100 at the brightest I would have been at a really really slow shutter speed and running the risk of blur what I decided to do here was I wanted to leave my ISO consistent from the darkest image to the brightest image so I picked ISO 800 because that allowed me to at My Brightest I still had an eighth of a second which is a fast enough shutter speed to stop a little bit of motion blur if I wanted to do this whole thing at ISO 100 it would have made my brightest exposure have a really really really slow shutter speed and I would have been worried about the Sun moving during the exposure or shaking the camera or something like that so this is what worked for me again totality you can't really practice ahead of time but the other one you can now I want to point something out during totality when I say bracketing I took a picture at every single exposure OneStop increments all the way from My Brightest to my darkest and what I was doing is I was looking at the histogram on the camera and I was ensuring that at My Brightest I wasn't clipping was didn't lose any detail in the darkest areas of the photo and at my darkest I wasn't losing detail in the brightest areas of my photo I kept going each Direction until I was sure there was no clipping happening and then I knew I was safe and good to go and I think I ran through the entire run of exposures two times during totality just to be absolutely sure that I got good exposures that also allowed me in the editing to take all those images and composite them together into a final totality shot where we see all of the detail and all of the information so I do want to point out again on this photo I say bracketed HDR this really was heavily bracketed again from an e of a second to 1 18,000 of a second all during that 2-minute time frame of totality the only other thing that I want to say is don't forget to just sit back and look up uh truly just enjoy this moment it is a really cool thing and I think a lot of times we get really engrossed as photographers in the gear and getting the shot and really do sit back and relax and enjoy this for a minute the other thing that I want to say is I actually ran practice drills doing exactly this process ahead of time to make sure that I had it down I would even run drills like okay here we go diamond ring is happening second contact just occurred okay filter off adjust exposure to my slowest shutter speed click adjust a stop click adjust a stop click adjust a stop click run through the whole process okay diamond rings happening again the moon has moved to the other side of the sun filter on back to normal let's keep shooting and it it it really helped day of eclipse to kind of have run through that process know my workflow obviously be ready for little things to come down the line that I probably don't expect but it was a pretty seamless process and it worked out pretty well because I had run so many examples all right everyone I hope you like this video I hope it provided a good overview of the eclipse and what to expect what to buy how to set your camera all of that kind of stuff I do want to remind you there are links in the description to all of the equipment that I listed and talked about in this video as well as some other useful resources so check it out down there also help each other if you guys have questions comments whatever they are leave them in the comment section down below I will be monitoring those as well so if you have a question or anything comes up leave it down there and I'll do my best to get back to you as soon as I can lastly hit subscribe to stay up to date with future videos we would love to have you as a subscriber and drop a like down below if you found some value in this thanks everybody and I'll catch you in the next one woo let's go

Channel: Rocky Mountain School of Photography

Views: 149,120

Keywords: photography tips, photography tutorial, tutorials, how to, photos, photo, learn photography, tutorial, basics of photography, photography classes, photography tricks, photography tips and tricks, Rocky Mountain School of Photography, solar eclipse, solar eclipse photography, how to shoot the eclipse, what do I need to photograph the eclipse, how to photograph the eclipse, how do you photograph the eclipse, sun photography, take photos of eclipse, how to take photos of the eclipse

Id: VbNdlJogtcE

Length: 34min 50sec (2090 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2024