Solar eclipse

Went to try to photograph today’s solar eclipse. I have to say I’m not 100% happy with the results. The mix of a somewhat unsophisticated lens, and a crude homemade filter resulted in lots of unwanted artefacts on the images. I cleaned up the worst ones in GIMP, but everything else is pretty much SooC – including the dirt on my sensor, made all-the-more visible by the narrow apertures I was shooting. 

Fortunately we enjoyed quite a good view from the westerly edge of Portsdown Hill. Had a good recce for possible locations yesterday afternoon, and marked them as “favourites” in OSMAnd+. This place was my first choice because it’s up a no-through single-track country lane that only leads to a farm. The place we got off the road is covered in brambles and appears to be the access to a footpath. The gate clearly hasn’t been opened in years. But we had enough room to get safely off the road, leaving room for other vehicles and pedestrians to pass.

Our spot is only about 25 metres up, but the ground slopes away gently to the west and north west with nothing in the way. Very quiet too. Just the faint pink noisy type hiss from the M27 motorway in a cutting, some 800 metres to the south, as the crow flies. Only encountered, just one group of three walkers. With whom I shared a look at the rear screen on my DMC-GX7.

I used welding glass as filter on the end of an elderly Hanimex 400mm, c/w Tamron 2x teleconverter. Which, of course is 1600mm 135 equivalent, on µ4/3. So the sun nearly filled the frame. Compensated for the greeny-yellow hue of the welding glass with the WB adjust. Not perfect but I couldn’t get decent filters in time. Stuck the 90mm x 110mm chunks of welding glass on some 72-82mm step up rings with Screwfix’s finest black silicone bath sealer (one to use as a filter and one as a spare). Then put the whole kit and caboodle on my faithful Benbo Trekker tripod, c/w Arca quick release.

To protect our own eyes, wife and I used my old welding helmets, with new welding glasses. The old glass was either peppered with welding sputter, or missing altogether. In my case my tilting helmet also doubled as sun-shade for the camera’s tilting screen. I sealed round any gaps in the helmets with the same black silicone sealer I used to stick the welding filters on the step-up rings. We took a couple of pairs of step-stools from the studio – we wanted to be comfy. Wife knocked together some rather tasty cheese and ham rolls, and packed some chilled sparkly fruit juice stuff. It was rather a pleasant and memorable late afternoon and early evening actually.