Solar Eclipse - Aug 12th
Absolutely done to death on social media by anyone with a camera, iPhone or a pair of dark glasses so it seems. Our take on the solar eclipse this year was to head to a place where we could get a decent viewing, take some proper solar protection glasses which allow us to see and enjoy the event and finally to photograph the eclipse in all it’s glory. The challenge was not to screw up my eyesight or burn the surface of my camera sensor through a 400mm magnifying glass !
Location
The best place in the UK to view the Solar Eclipse was down in Cornwall at aptly named ‘Lands End’. Viewers at this location were promised a >95% solar eclipse. Travel to northern Spain and there is promise of a 100% solar eclipse.
My wife was as keen to see the event as I was and long before the event started to look at getting us a flight to northern Spain, near Bilbao. Tickets were already expensive several months in advance and hotel / B&B accommodation was already getting scarce.
We’ve been talking about getting a camper van now for about 2 years which would have been ideal but at this point we haven’t got one, so we decided to find a B&B down near Lands End.
If there is one take-away from my last trip to Cornwall, it could be summarised in just 2 words… ‘No Parking’. Yes, it’s impossible to find parking at most places you might like to visit and if you do it’s expensive and usually a long way from where you’re looking to be.
So, we decided to take the motorbike for a run down to Cornwall and we checked ourselves into the Lands End Hostel & B&B for two nights from the 11th of August. The bike was an excellent choice with lots of UK holiday traffic on the M5 and generally around Cornwall.
The B&B was super comfortable with absolutely everything you might need and some very welcoming hosts who looked after us throughout our stay. Even better it’s less than 10 minutes walk from Lands End.
As the name suggest, it’s both a hostel and a B&B. We stayed in the B&B bit with a lovely double bed, en-suite bathroom and private self-catering facilities. Equally comfortable but slightly more rudimentary accommodation was available in the hostel with some shared facilities.
Also, next door was a nice campsite which would have been ideal (and cheaper) had we had a camper van at this point, though the journey would have taken longer to get here. I’ve made a mental note for a future visit.
On Tuesday night (the night before the eclipse), we walked down to Lands End for some food and to take in the sunset. They’ve commercialised it so much now, that the land either side as you enter is now all car-parking and costs £10 per car! It was as you might imagine, absolutely packed and this was the night before the eclipse.
We caught a lovely sunset and I grabbed a few photos with the Hasselblad. I mostly photographed the people who were enjoying the scene who were nicely silhouetted by the sun.
Lands End Sunset - Hasselblad X2Dii / 35mm XPAN format
Lands End Coastline - Hasselblad X2Dii / 35mm XPAN format
After the sunset there was supposed to be a fireworks show, but given the drought we’re having which seems to be a sequel to the famous summer of 1976, there was a severe risk of wildfires. The fireworks show was replaced by a drone display which was equally fun as they created colourful shapes in the sky including one of the famous Lands End sign (which incidentally will cost you a tenner just to stand next to now).
If you want to stand next to the Lands End sign for for a photo, you need to turn up after 6pm and even better, off-season when there’s nobody to police it.
Equipment
This is not meant to be a technical article but it’s worth mentioning that if you want to see, enjoy and photograph an eclipse, you will need to make a few basic preparations.
Part 1 looking at the sun
You really should NOT be looking directly at the sun for more than a split second as doing so will definitely cause irreversible damage after too long.
It’s worth understanding that the solar eclipse from start to finish is about 2 hours, so you will definitely need to get some proper glasses. We bought ours 2 months earlier for just €2 from Germany. Authentic eclipse viewing glasses must be explicitly stamped with the code ISO 12312-2 (sometimes written as ISO 12312-2:2015) to certify the highest level of eye protection.
Wearing these glasses might look a little silly, but you’ll be able to watch the event from start to finish which will help with timing for taking photos too.
Proper glasses give you a perfect view of the sun without damaging your eyes.
Part 2 photographing the sun
Just like your eyes, your camera sensor is also very sensitive and can be irreversibly damaged by the rays from the sun. You’re going to need a 400mm or more lens to properly photograph the sun which is a giant magnifying glass. Your sensor can burn in seconds, and also your shutter leaves over the sensor can melt. Damage to either of these things pretty much renders your expensive camera, a paper-weight.
I opted to use the Sony A7RV for this shoot with a 400mm lens attached. With 60 megapixels resolution available, the camera creates massive images which can be cropped later so the subject (the sun) can fill the frame.
Use Filters
You can buy solar filters for your lenses, but ND (Neutral Density) filters will also do the job nicely. They act just like sunglasses for your camera and come in a range of different strengths (densities).
You need about 15 stops of light reduction for photographing the sun, so you might need to stack more than one filter on the front of your lens. Mine are magnetic filters from KASE which means I can easily stack them.
Firtly, I used a 10-stop (ND1000) filter which blocks 99.9% of light (it lets 1/1000th of the light through). On top of that I used a further 6 stop ND64 filter to block even more light. That’s a total of 16 stops, hopefully you’re getting the idea?
Camera Settings (Small Aperture & fast shutter speed)
I set my aperture to f11 which creates just a very small aperture for the light to pass through to the sensor. Finally, I set my shutter to fire for 1/2000th of a second. This was enough to capture an image of the sun with enough clarity to see the famous sunspots from solar flares on the surface.
As a further protection, between shots, I place a magnetic lens cover over the two ND filters to eliminate any further light getting into my camera and giving maximum protection.
Sunspots and changes in colour
Below are two images I took of the sun. The first was just before the eclipse started at 17:55pm and the second was at 20:03pm just as the eclipse was finishing.
Spots on the Sun, known as sunspots, are cooler regions caused by concentrations of magnetic field lines that inhibit heat from flowing to the surface. These spots appear darker than the surrounding areas and are associated with solar activity, such as solar flares and usually appear in pairs.
The Sun appears more orange as it sets due to Rayleigh scattering, which causes shorter wavelengths of light (like blue) to scatter more, leaving the longer wavelengths (like red and orange) to dominate the view. This effect is intensified because the sunlight has to travel through a thicker layer of the atmosphere at sunset on the horizon.
If you set your camera to automatic white balance, it will compensate and all images will be different shades of white. For this type of photography, it’s important to fix the colour temperature manually.
For this entire shoot, I fixed the white balance to 5200 Kelvin which is daylight. This allowed me to capture the changes in colour as the sun got lower on the horizon.
Image of the sun taken at 17:55pm. You can see three distinct sun-spots.
Final Image taken at 20:03pm showing the same 3 sunspots
Stay Hydrated
The whole eclipse lasted two hours, so instead of going down to Lands End, we watched it from our private garden at the B&B. Very civilised indeed. It meant I could have a cup of tea to hand during the event which became beer a little later on. Without the crowds of people, I was more comfortable leaving my camera set up for 2 hours.
I used the Sony A7RV with a 400mm lens on a tripod, you can see the filters fitted.
Camera set up - Sony A7RV, 400mm lens, 16 stops ND filter (cap replaced between shots).
Turning it into a collage
During the eclipse, I took 70 images of the sun & moon. Clearly I’m going to need photoshop to layer up the images and present them as a collage.
I had thought about doing what everyone else did and showing the diagonal line of multiple images as the sun sets across the sky but it’s not a particularly interesting image and there is a lot of negative space. This isn’t a piece of art, it’s capturing an event as it unfolds in stages.
I decided on 32 final images laid out in lines of 8 images from start to finish, then adding a title box with some information to commemorate the event.
To create the collage, I placed a grid on the black canvas so I could precisely align and size each image into 32 boxes. The final image was over 500 megabytes.
Printing the image
Settled on the format for the collage, I need to get the image printed and professionally framed. I’ve picked the paper I want and it’s going to be sized to A2 (420 × 594mm). I will get Photographique in Bristol to print two copies of the image for me. My friends at Blues Picture Framing in London will frame up the print so I can hang it on the wall in my home.
The final image
After the Eclipse
After the eclipse we had dinner and a few drinks in the garden and then the skies turned dark… really dark. It was still about 25˚C and a lovely summer’s evening, so we laid down in the garden and watched the sky as there was going to be a meteor shower from about midnight.
I could just about make out the distinct cosmic cloud that stripes across the sky illuminated by billions of stars and nebulae. I couldn’t resist and took some photos with the Hasselblad.
It was my first go at Astrophotography with this camera and I don’t have a tracking mount either, so it’s not perfect but I was pleased with the result. You can also spot a couple of low-earth orbit satellites bombing across the sky at 17500mph.
The lines at the bottom of the images are just telephone wires from a nearby pole.
It was a worthwhile trip that we both enjoyed very much. We also came away with a permanent reminder of the moments we shared watching the eclipse.
It’s important that photos are printed and able to be enjoyed by many after an event. It would be such a shame to take such images and leave them on the computer to one day be lost for ever.
One of my objectives this year was to print more of my photos.