Nature Photography

[BigBlueHen53]

Awesome photos guys and gals!

I planned on traveling to Texas or Arkansas, but I ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri to see the eclipse. It was my first total eclipse and it did not dissapoint. Hard to put into words how incredible the experience was. Viewing a partial or even an annular eclipse is in no way even remotely comparable to seeing totality. It's on a whole different level.

I ran two telephotos and 1 wide angle camera. I used 3 custom modes for the partial, bailey's beads, and totality phases with a lot of bracketed shots to keep from missing anything. Overall, it went quite well. I wanted to run one camera at 1120mm to get some close up prominence action but I chickened out. I ended up shooting at 500mm and 640mm. This gave me more margin for error and doubled my odds of coming away with some usable totality shots.

Skimming through my images, it looks like they turned out decent. I won't get to edit any until I get back to AL tomorrow.

Here was my setup and a couple off the viewfinder. A heavy crop of the 640mm showed decent detail in the prominences.


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Awesome! And welcome to my neighborhood! I live about 30 miles east of "PB," or "the Bluff," where we do all our shopping.

 

[HopKat]

Awesome photos guys and gals!

I planned on traveling to Texas or Arkansas, but I ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri to see the eclipse. It was my first total eclipse and it did not dissapoint. Hard to put into words how incredible the experience was. Viewing a partial or even an annular eclipse is in no way even remotely comparable to seeing totality. It's on a whole different level.

I ran two telephotos and 1 wide angle camera. I used 3 custom modes for the partial, bailey's beads, and totality phases with a lot of bracketed shots to keep from missing anything. Overall, it went quite well. I wanted to run one camera at 1120mm to get some close up prominence action but I chickened out. I ended up shooting at 500mm and 640mm. This gave me more margin for error and doubled my odds of coming away with some usable totality shots.

Skimming through my images, it looks like they turned out decent. I won't get to edit any until I get back to AL tomorrow.

Here was my setup and a couple off the viewfinder. A heavy crop of the 640mm showed decent detail in the prominences.


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Lol..I KNEW you had the situation covered. I can see lots of planning was involved. Excited to see your images. It was an incredible experience.

 

[mdees88]

Awesome! And welcome to my neighborhood! I live about 30 miles east of "PB," or "the Bluff," where we do all our shopping.

Thanks, small world! We stayed in Sikeston and drove in to the "bluff" early Monday morning. I ended up shooting at the Elks Lodge off of 67. Beautiful country up there.

 

[mdees88]

Lol..I KNEW you had the situation covered. I can see lots of planning was involved. Excited to see your images. It was an incredible experience.

There's no telling how many hours of YouTube I watched getting ready for this one, lol. Right in the middle of totality I stopped photographing and took a minute to soak it all in. Trying to put it into words doesn't do it justice. Everyone should see this at least once in their lives.

Here are a couple images. I'm going to do a composite of the phases from start to finfish but that one's going to take a while...

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Thank you for those!

 

[mdees88]

Mission accomplished...

Ever since I saw a composite image like this, I knew I wanted to capture and create one myself. This is the reason I went, but just experiencing totality was worth it, even if I didn't get the shot...

 

[HopKat]

There's no telling how many hours of YouTube I watched getting ready for this one, lol. Right in the middle of totality I stopped photographing and took a minute to soak it all in. Trying to put it into words doesn't do it justice.

Here are a couple images. I'm going to do a composite of the phases from start to finfish but that one's going to take a while...


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Mission accomplished...

Ever since I saw a composite image like this, I knew I wanted to capture and create one myself. This is the reason I went, but just experiencing totality was worth it, even if I didn't get the shot...


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Wow!! You more than accomplished it..awesome! Congratulations

 

[azurbanclucker]

There's no telling how many hours of YouTube I watched getting ready for this one, lol. Right in the middle of totality I stopped photographing and took a minute to soak it all in. Trying to put it into words doesn't do it justice. Everyone should see this at least once in their lives.

Here are a couple images. I'm going to do a composite of the phases from start to finfish but that one's going to take a while...


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Those solar prominences....

 

[jnicholes]

Mission accomplished...

Ever since I saw a composite image like this, I knew I wanted to capture and create one myself. This is the reason I went, but just experiencing totality was worth it, even if I didn't get the shot...


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I’m not upset, but it looks like you’ve surpassed me when it comes to astrophotography. You did a magnificent job, congratulations!

Here are all of my eclipse photos. One was taken with just a phone, the others were through a telescope.

August 21, 2017. Weiser, Idaho

October 14, 2023. Home in Idaho

April 8, 2024. Home in Idaho

Again, great job on the photo.

 

[mdees88]

I’m not upset, but it looks like you’ve surpassed me when it comes to astrophotography. You did a magnificent job, congratulations!

Here are all of my eclipse photos. One was taken with just a phone, the others were through a telescope.

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August 21, 2017. Weiser, Idaho

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October 14, 2023. Home in Idaho

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April 8, 2024. Home in Idaho

Again, great job on the photo.

Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. Nice images too. The 2017 eclipse was the first one I tried to photograph. It's what got me interested in eclipses and solar imaging.

What I like about astrophotography is, there's always room for improvement. I can shoot the same object year after year and continually improve it by learning new techniques and/or upgrading/refining the equipment and processes I use.

Take this progression of the Orion nebula for example. I have been shooting it on and off for about 10 years, but I only recently started getting higher quality images. While there has been a lot of improvement, I am still not satisfied with the final result and will definitely be shooting it some more in the future while learning how to get better at editing.