Last Month’s Eclipse

Well, it was about a month ago that the big annular eclipse happened, and I was near Salt Lake City and figured I would try and get some photos. Where I was in Utah was in the path to get about 87% coverage of the sun, and since the central band of the eclipse was supposed to only get abour 90% coverage, I figured it wasn’t worth trying to drive anywhere to try and photograph it, but instead decided to hike up one of the nearby canyons and see what I could pull off.

A few days earlier, I had ordered a bunch of cheap eclipse glasses off Amazon and equipped with my cameras, and a couple pairs of glasses, my friend, Katherine and I hiked up the one trail. I had earlier scouted the trail and it looked like it should work, but the morning was pretty cloudy and things were not looking too great. Shortly before the eclipse was to start things cleared up a bit, and I was doing my best to try and get photos and a timelapse series, but it was quickly apparent that I didn’t know what I was doing and without a proper sunlight filter for my camera, the photos just looked like any other daytime photo.

Then I had a bright idea (Katherine may have mentioned something that triggered it) and I quickly cannibalized a pair of the eclipse glasses and put the film from the glasses *inside* the camera between the sensor and the lens! It wasn’t as clean as having a proper filter on the front of the lens, but after a few hiccups and some adjusting, it worked!

The end result might not be the best… it ends up being a black field with a bright orange crescent sun with the black shadow of the moon in front of it. But it was the best I managed. I ran some timelapse series where you can see the sun move across the face of the sun and also took a few stills…. enjoy.

Hopefully if I try again for the big total solar eclipse in April 2024, I can get something a bit better.