Solar eclipse shots from Martin, Bryan and Charles

Martin and Charles sent us their Eclipse pictures:

Martin Step:

I thought you might be interested in seeing my best shot from the solar eclipse.

This shot was taken with my a6300 and FE 4.5-5.6/70-300G, handheld, f5.6 and 300 mm, at 1/30th and ISO 100, and Continuous Autofocus. Simple, right?

Actually, since the perfect exposure for this situation is so tricky to achieve, I set the camera to exposure bracket for 9 shots, fastest to slowest, in 1EV increments, with the exposure set to 1/250th at 5.6, and fixed ISO 100. So the nine shots went from 1/4000 to 1/15. I had started out intending to use my tripod and wireless remote, but I didn’t want the lens pointing at the sun while I was waiting for totality, so as not to damage the sensor. But then when the moment came, the tripod wouldn’t co-operate at the near vertical angle required, and instead of trying to sort it out and waste time, I quickly switched to handheld with OSS.

I took four or five sets of 9, and this one was the best of the bunch, cropped to about 50% but otherwise unaltered or enhanced. It is a color shot, even though it looks monochrome. The little speck at center left is the planet Venus.

The shot was taken from the parking lot of the WalMart SuperCenter at Exit 108 on Interstate 65 in Tennessee, about 25 miles north of Nashville. This location turned out to be extremely popular with people who had come from all over the US, because it had about the best weather forecast of any place along the path of totality. We met folks from Maryland, Florida, Texas, California, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, New York, Maine, and many more, most of whom camped overnight in the parking lot, courtesy of Wal-Mart. There was even a family of five who flew in from Tokyo, Japan just to see the eclipse from this spot! It was a real party atmosphere, and everyone was having a great time.

As for ourselves, we drove from Canada, 15 hours to get there, and 19 hours to get home. It normally wouldn’t take that long, but the traffic was unbelievable!

Anyway, I hope you like the shot!

Best regards,

Martin Step
Kitchener, Ontario

This shot was taken at 5.6 at 1/1000, ISO 100 (EV-2):

Charles:

I though you may enjoy this composition taken with the Sony A7RII and the new Sony 100-400 GM lens. ND Filters were from Breakthrough Photography and HiTech Firecrest (using the Wine Country Camera Filter Holder System).
Note that in New York City (Manhattan) we did not have totality, and the pictures reflect this.

Bryan Goff on SonyAlphaForum (see picture there):

I had a goal during the eclipse. To create and HDR photo of it. You can easily make out the surface of the moon, the suns corona and two large prominence’s located at 1 and 3 o’clock. This image was created with 8 photos, processed in LightRoom and PhotoShop. This was my first eclipse and first time photographing an eclipse. What do you guys think?
Gear used:
Sony Alpha a6300
Orion ED80T – 720mm equiv
Celestron AVX
Crooked River Ranch, Oregon