Bosque Bill
Senior Member
I created a solar lens by cutting up one pair of ISO eclipse glasses (minimum order was 5; sorry if some of you have zero pairs). I found a plastic can/tub that fits snugly over my long lens (300mm + 1.4x), cut a hole the size of the glasses' "lens", and mounted the film to the can with black gaffer tape.Wandering Sagebrush said:Bill, thanks! I may use my backup D800 instead of thr primary camera. I think it will be fine, but...
I have a 90º viewer that replaces the eye piece on my DSLR (I got it when I was doing lots of macro photos.) So there is little risk of looking at the raw sun while framing the shot. Learned to use the sun's shadow on the camera body to roughly align the shot.
I've been practicing this morning. f/8.0 at 1/60 sec seems to work pretty well, with the lens on manual focus and with gaffer tape holding the focus.
At totality, I can pop the can off easily, as you don't need a special lens or glasses while the sun is completely covered by the moon. I will likely use exposure bracketing during totality
I'm also going to try to take video with another camera with a 200mm lens... and a landscape time-lapse using my phone.
Yes, I'm taking 4 cameras and three tripods after telling myself I was just going to enjoy the show and leaving the photography to the professionals. Note to self: remember to enjoy the show.