Cool Links: How to photograph today’s annular solar eclipse
Annular ring eclipse photo, courtesy of National Geographic
Today, the western United States gets treated to a rare astronomical event, an annular eclipse of the sun. Depending on where you are, the show starts around 5:00 PM Pacific Time and runs to almost 8:00 PM. During the moments of annularity, the moon will be completely in front of the sun, but not covering it. The result will be a pretty spectacular “Ring of Fire”. I was fortunate to catch an annular eclipse 18 years ago when we were in Lubbock, Texas. It was spectacular.
Many of us who are in the eclipse’s path will be tempted to look at the eclipse or shoot the eclipse with our cameras or iPhones. Here are some links to great tips on how to safely view and shoot today’s eclipse.
IMPORTANT! Do NOT look straight at the eclipse! You will damage your eyes. Really.
Also, USA Today writes:
If you have a compact camera with an LCD screen (such as in iPhone. — =M=), you could, in theory, watch the eclipse on the screen, but it will still probably damage the camera’s image sensor, so we wouldn’t recommend it.
User Charlemagne in the Canon Digital Photography Forums writes:
If it is a full eclipse, I would try capturing the landscape at that moment. It’s magical. As if life suddenly comes to a stop. So wide angle for me. If it lasts long enough, might try to capture the diamond ring around the moon, but I’m not sure that is safe without extra protective filters. You don’t want to toast your sensor, or your eyes.
Here are a few links I found which are written for DSLRs and traditional cameras, but many of the techniques can easily be adapted for use with an iPhone camera.
How to photograph a solar eclipse, by Katherine Gray, Tecca, USA Today
How to photograph Sunday’s solar eclipse, The Christian Science Monitor
I’ll be shooting the eclipse today with an OWLE BUBO along with it’s very nice, huge, light-gathering wide angle lens to capture what’s around me.
Have fun, view safely and if you get any good, striking or eerie eclipse pics, share them in Life In LoFi’s Flickr Group!
=M=
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When we first reviewed Picfx, it was a quirky little square format photo app with a fairly straightforward number of filter effects. It’s grown into a pretty versatile square format photo effects app with a large number of filter presets, adjustments and other new tools that make it worth a look for square format iPhoneography.
But, at least it’s getting closer….
Snap it. Tweak it. Love it. Share it. Snapseed is one of the most powerful photo editors available for iOS. It’s got a full set of editing tools including “pins” for the very cool selective adjustments to help localize your edits and tweaks. Pretty cool! As a universal app, it’s designed to work great on iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. It supports up to 6.25 MP on an iPhone 3GS and up to 16 MP images for iPad 2 and iPhone 4 and 4S.
When I found out that the Awesomizer tool of the excellent Camera Awesome was built by Athentech, I was worried that spelled the end of life for one of my favorite photo apps, Perfectly Clear. The long lapse between update didn’t help much to dispel my fears.
A while back, I reviewed PolarCam, another retro, instant-style fauxlaroid camera app. While I wasn’t overly excited about the app at first, it does shoot in full resolution and has very nice color and texture. You can also shoot retro instant video with the app.
