The Eclipse and Bad Photography

[James G. Dainis]

Living in Florida I only saw a partial eclipse.  I had heard that during a total eclipse things got very dark and shadows from tree leaves took on a surrealistic appearance.  There was no longer direct light from a   ball in the sky but lighting from a circular source in the sky causing strange shadows. Many people joined large crowds such as at the grandstand at Indianapolis speedway.  They saw just as much as the people at home watching on television, just staring up at the sky.

How dark did the scenery get on the ground during totality? It was impossible to tell. The TV cameramen did not know what exposure to use to show the true scene.  At one time everything looked dark then, blink, an exposure change so everything looked light like normal daylight then, blink, everything looked very much brighter than normal daylight. Then another blink and everything looked  very dark again.

There will be another USA eclipse in another 20 years. Perhaps by then the TV people will figure out what exposure to use to show the correct scene.  And, people will realize it is better to be in a park or open area  to seen the effect that the eclipse has on the landscape rather than just staring up at the sky to see what people watching on television are seeing.

[AJG]

I took my class outside for the eclipse in upstate NY but we were not quite in the path of totality and the sky was cloudy with only a few brief breaks in the clouds.  The sky did get very dark, the outside lights on the buildings came on and the wind came up for a few minutes.  Photographically speaking, the most interesting things for us were the crowd reactions and the incredible cloud formations that changed as the light changed.  

It is interesting that the exposure automation that works so well for TV cameras most of the time failed for an event like this, but it doesn't surprise me.  As I told my students, be sure to turn off the auto focus on their cameras and manually set their lenses at infinity when they used the filters that I provided for them to photograph the eclipse itself.  I wouldn't be optimistic about TV people figuring out how to expose for the next eclipse--they don't listen to us old people about much else.

[hjoseph7]

I saw the total eclipse from beginning to end down here in Arkansas in the parking lot of my apartment complex . The whole thing took more than hour. About an hour  and an half actually. It was pretty warm outside for a spring day, so I got in my car sitting in the parking lot with a big bottle of juice.  Once in a while I would take a peek with my eclipse glasses. There were few if any clouds in the sky. I think the first sign that the sun was being blocked was around 12:37 CT.

Little by little the moon began to eat a chunck  out of the sun,  but it took pretty long. I looked up every five minutes or so. About half-way through, the temperature outside began to decrease slightly. About 3/4 of the way through, it looked as if it was 6:00pm or dusk but it was midday. Finally around 1:53 CT the Sun was completely covered by the sun.

You heard a gasp from the people who were watching because it got pretty dark, suddenly ! It was about as dark as when the sun goes down completely during a normal day, but not pitch dark.

Once the sun was completely covered, you could make out what looked like a planet to the right of the sun which was very bright, then a somewhat dimmer and much smaller one to the left. They looked like stars to me.  I tried to take a picture with my cell phone, but it didn't come out very well .

The temperature then dropped significantly, but I did not notice any weird behavior from the birds. They just kept chirping as usual. After about 2-3 minutes or so you could see different colors(actually red, purple and blue) a the bottom of the circumference of the sun and moon. It looked like the colors were perculating or something ? This lasted only about 1/2 a minute or less. Then the sun began to push the moon out of its way. You could see a very bright triangle of light coming from the top right of the dark moon. Then things began working backwards as they had begun.    

Edited April 10 by hjoseph7

[James G. Dainis]

   I had a partial eclipse here in Florida. About 1/2 of the sun got covered.  I took a gray card reading before and after. It didn't look that much darker during the 1/2 eclipse but I did get about a one stop difference on my gray card reading. If I didn't know that there was a partial eclipse I never would have know that it was occurring. The sun was too bright to look at. 

I had heard that one could see the stars during a  total eclipse.

 

[Robin Smith]

The light during the total eclipse was more like bright moonlight with sharp shadows, as any annular light from the sun is still effectively a point light source at that distance. In Vermont the 10-20 mile view in the distance across Lake Champlain was not in the totality shadow so it was rather like a heavy cloud over the sun where you are with bright sunlight in the far distance. It was to use a tired word, awesome. It was surprisingly easy to get a good shot. I only shot during totality without a filter. If one had been further into the totality shadow perhaps the stars would have been visible, but I don't remember seeing any where I was.

[Ed_Ingold]

The corona during totality was surprisingly bright. I used 1/2000, f/4.0 @ ISO 100. The landscape resembled late dusk. This was in Sullivan, Indiana. The only "star" I could see clearly was Jupiter.