Happy Solar Eclipse Day to All! Post your favorite pic or video here

[Dave and Kimberly]

   I know many of you are at an RV camp with others... but where ever you find yourself, have a fun, safe day.   Here in Ohio we have family all around us and we will share the time with them.    If you have a great pic or story from your experience share it here so we can all enjoy it with you!

[Mike and Carol]

We’re not camping but are only about 45 minutes from where most Oliver campers are and we live in the path of the eclipse.  Unfortunately, it’s pretty cloudy.  I can’t even see an outline of the sun through the clouds.  Hope it clears up some in the next hour, otherwise there will be disappointment in Texas Hill Country!!  Mie

[johnwen]

Sun in and out at Grapeland, TX...not quite in 100% path but close enough :)  Having fun...

John

Edited April 8 by johnwen

[topgun2]

We are just past "peak" here is Western North Carolina with around 85% covered - only a small fingernail left showing.

While it is partly cloudy there are enough breaks that a fairly good view can be obtained.  Unfortunately though it didn't get dark enough for the birds to stop singing.

Hopefully all of you in the "total" path get a chance to see the diamond ring!

Bill

[Steve Morris]

We were in the backyard here in northern Ohio, with almost 4 minutes of crazy skies! Light clouds and maybe a bit of missed focus left the edges soft, but these came out fair. I'm sure there will be a lot of pretty spectacular photos posted across the country!

 

 

[rideandfly]

15 minutes ago, Steve Morris said:

We were in the backyard here in northern Ohio, with almost 4 minutes of crazy skies! Light clouds and maybe a bit of missed focus left the edges soft, but these came out fair. I'm sure there will be a lot of pretty spectacular photos posted across the country!

 

 

Steve, Nice Shot!

[Steve Morris]

13 minutes ago, rideandfly said:

Steve, Nice Shot!

Thank you, sincerely. But as I mentioned to John D over on the FB group, I’m not particularly pleased. It almost looks like movement more than missed focus, but it was on a good tripod, we had no wind, 1/500th second, mirrorless camera so no shutter bounce, and remote release. Not what I expected from $4k of equipment I guess I don't work well in a hurry...

[Mike and Carol]

It was cloudy here, but full eclipse peaked through a few times for 15 or 20 seconds.  The darkness was weird. Mike

[johnwen]

18 minutes ago, Steve Morris said:

Thank you, sincerely. But as I mentioned to John D over on the FB group, I’m not particularly pleased. It almost looks like movement more than missed focus, but it was on a good tripod, we had no wind, 1/500th second, mirrorless camera so no shutter bounce, and remote release. Not what I expected from $4k of equipment I guess I don't work well in a hurry...

Very nice, Steve :)

[Dave and Kimberly]

 

    Well... here is what I learned.   My pictures didn't look nearly as good as what I was observing thru my own eyes from our back yard.  I guess you need more fancy gear than my new iPhone.  I was kind of disappointed.   And then I turned around and saw my wife, my daughter and many of my beautiful grand children, I realized something!   The best pictures were all behind me as they were looking up and completely awestruck with the eclipse totality happening... and then our landscape lighting came on!    🙂

   The whole experience was really something!   I won't forget it for a long time.    I hope everybody's day was just as great as mine was!

Edited April 8 by Dave and Kimberly

[Dave and Kimberly]

Steve Morris-  Those are great pictures that you got!   You can clearly see the solar flares on the sun!  Great pic!

[Galway Girl]

From Lady Bird Johnson Park.  (9) Oliver’s here today.

Lots of looking between clouds.

Fun to hear the crowd cheer at totality. 

All pedestal lights turned on at totality. 

[topgun2]

16 hours ago, Steve Morris said:

I’m not particularly pleased.

Steve - 

I don't believe that there was much wrong with your equipment nor your abilities as a photographer.

Perhaps you could have improved your results (marginally) with a different set of lens filters, but, with the amount of moisture in the atmosphere I'd guess that you were fairly doomed from the start.

Regardless - nice work and thanks for letting us share in your event.

Bill

[Steve Morris]

2 hours ago, topgun2 said:

Steve - 

I don't believe that there was much wrong with your equipment nor your abilities as a photographer.

Perhaps you could have improved your results (marginally) with a different set of lens filters, but, with the amount of moisture in the atmosphere I'd guess that you were fairly doomed from the start.

Regardless - nice work and thanks for letting us share in your event.

Bill

Thank you,

Deb says I'm too critical of my work. Maybe, but coming from 45 years of engineering, I can't help but analyzing everything. 🤷‍♂️

I did buy a solar filter just for this event. I was tempted to go cheap, but considering that I was putting it on a very expensive lens, I ended up at the midrange of the quality name-brand filters. I was using my Fujifilm X-T5 with XF 100-400mm lens plus XF 1.4X TC, Hoya 77mm solar filter on a heavy Bogen tripod from the '70s, and remote shutter release.

 I'm also thinking that most of the softness was from the slight overcast condition. Here's a practice photo from last week during the same time frame, and the edge of the disk is much sharper. You can clearly see the sun spots, which didn't show up so well on yesterday's partial eclipse images. This was taken at 840mm (full frame equivalent), ISO 250, 0 ev , f/8.0, 1/1000 sec using the same setup as yesterday.

 

I still have the RAW files from yesterday that I haven't reviewed yet. I'm guessing there will be much the same results, just in much larger files.

As @Dave and Kimberly mentioned above, I had everything set up ahead of time so that I didn't spend the whol thing looking into my camera. Just occasionally adjusting the viewfinder to get the sun centered and poking the remote. It was only Deb and me in our backyard, so no crowd to enjoy it with. But it was still amazing to look around and see how things changed so quickly. Deb has about 50 solar lights scattered around her vegetable and flower gardens, and they all came on during totality. It was a spectacularly enjoyable afternoon! Only 75 years until the next one passes over Ohio! 😉 

Thank you for the input!

Edited April 9 by Steve Morris

[topgun2]

58 minutes ago, Steve Morris said:

'm also thinking that most of the softness was from the slight overcast condition.

Absolutely!

There is simply not much that you can do with that kind of cloud cover.  The light simply refracts off the moisture particles in the hazy plus any "dust" in the air gets "stuck" to those too and that is why (even with the naked eye) things simply are not as "sharp" as they are on a day with fewer clouds/moisture.  Next time - demand humidity of below 15% and no wind and no people kicking up dust!

Bill

p.s.  45 years of engineering has not much to do with it.  My father was a pipe fitter before becoming a professional photographer.  I swear that there is something that comes through the lens of a camera that makes some people simply "mad" (shutter madness?) about the entire process.  Spending hours/days waiting for that "correct" sun angle, that critter to poke his/her head out of the hole, that butterfly to land on THAT flower, the bride to get THAT look on her face, the fighter jets doing vertical takeoffs at the end of the runway and NOT getting that afterburner flame touching the ground, etc., etc..😊

[MAX Burner]

We were near Gatesville, TX for the eclipse yesterday - a private ranch with 68 or so various fiberglass rigs, a couple AS's, and an Imagine - there were 11 LE2 Olivers in the mix.  

Here's some PIX and a VID of the eclipse from our iPhones:

 

Incredible experiencing the darkness and the coolness setting in as totality was established (4 min + 16 sec from our location)...