This evening we’ve had our first decent partial solar eclipse in the UK in 27 years, since the one we had in 1999 that saw totality creep into Cornwall. As it took place in the late 90s, it was something I only experienced rather than captured (although we did also have a partial eclipse about a decade ago, on the morning of my return trip to Borough Market – although heavy cloud cover meant there was nothing to see other than a bunch of Londoners looking in the wrong direction).
Although I had the wherewithal to order some eclipse viewing glasses a month ago, I only thought about buying a solar filter for my camera a week ago, by which time everywhere I could find was sold out of a proper screw-on filter. I did manage to buy a filter sheet, which would allow me to fashion a filter of my own. Unfortunately, although it was due to be delivered last Sunday, comfortably ahead of the eclipse, it first got delayed to the day of the eclipse, and then – on the day itself, no less – delayed until the weekend after. Amazon don’t often let me down, but when they do, they fall apart completely – but really, it’s my own fault for not thinking about a filter for my camera a month ago when I was buying glasses for us.
With Plan A (a proper filter attachment) already out of the window, and Plan B (the filter sheet) getting derailed at the last moment, clearly I needed to come up with another plan. All I had were the filter glasses, so that would have to do. Since I knew I would spend most if not all of the eclipse shooting at the maximum zoom or my longest telephoto, I hoped that the field of view would be narrow enough to see through the glasses without them obscuring the view – or if they did, it would be slight enough that it could be cropped out. Cue some quick work with some cardboard, a penknife and some duck tape, and soon I had a perfectly serviceable solar filter for my telephoto lens.
I finished not long after the eclipse started, and nipped out to get some test shots. After a little bit of dialling in the settings, I got an exposure I was happy with.
So, obviously you can see my usual settings above. I had to shoot with manual focus and turn off AutoISO, as the camera was trying to focus on the inside of its little hood. I also shot handheld.
After a little while the sun moved such that we couldn’t see it from our back garden any more and we had to sit out in our front garden. To make things a bit easier for me, I set up my camera on a tripod, which meant in addition to the aforementioned setup, I also turned off image stabilisation, and added a shot timer so that any wobble on my (admittedly quite cheap) tripod had stopped by the time the shutter stopped. From then, it was just a case of periodically taking shots, as the moon slowly moved across the sun’s disc.
As we were in our front garden, we periodically lent our eclipse glasses to passersby with colanders so they could get a proper look at the eclipse in progress, as you couldn’t buy the glasses for love nor money by the time many people realised the eclipse was coming up.
About an hour after it started, we reached the maximum coverage for our part of the world – slightly over 90% if the internet is to be believed.
The light entered the sort of odd twilight you only get when the sun is a bit broken. Before long the sun started growing back.
As the eclipse started to fade, I started getting caught out by the sun starting to disappear behind a tree, resulting in me needing to constantly move my camera to adjust.
Soon, it began to pass behind a nearby building. This allowed me to get an interesting silhouette shot.
Then, the sun had dipped out of sight, and it wasn’t really worth chasing it much further. Plus, by that point we were an hour past our kid’s bedtime, so it was time to pack up and get the day back into some semblance of order.
Although I then spent my evening editing photos and writing this post, because it seems like the perfect opportunity and excuse to make like the Creative Splurges of old, and get a post out whilst it’s still vaguely relevant. Have I proofread this? No. Let’s live on the edge this evening!
There are a few more shots in the gallery below, where you can track the progress of the eclipse.
Creative Splurges 
