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| Partial Solar Eclipse |
Waking up this morning I had no idea I was waking in the only state able to witness the solar eclipse. Lucky viewers in the southern Pacific had a perfect view of an annular solar eclipse in which a 'ring of fire' from the sun surrounds the dark circle of the moon. Here in Hawaii this was the best of the partial eclipse. These photos were taken right before 4pm local time at the height of the eclipse. But preparing and finally getting the shots was not as easy as I would have thought.
After rushing home from work I grabbed my camera bag and headed to a favorite overlook to try my hand at a new kind of photography. Special lenses are not just recommended for sun glasses but also for cameras pointing right at the sun. Unfortunately I did not have any special lenses so I had to come up with something.
First I set my camera up on a tripod and switched onto 2sec timer mode. I set the focus on the distant horizon and switched to manual to lock it in. This way I would waste no time on auto focusing when I was ready to shoot. I cranked up my f-stop and shutter speed, while keeping my ISO low at 100. This way I was letting in very little light which was necessary since this was the middle of the afternoon and it wasn't going to be a total eclipse. Then I had to wait to have a lucky cloud drift in front of the sun to dim it further. The final step was to hold up a pair of sunglasses in front of the lens, quickly angle the camera up towards the sun, and take the picture before quickly turning the camera away to avoid any prolonged exposure. It only took a couple of times before I got the first picture. Then to try something different I set up under a palm tree to have a little extra in the frame for the second eclipse photo.
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| The view when not looking at the sun |
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