April 8th, 2024 Eclipse - Let's see some pics!

I'm excited to see what photos everyone else captured of the eclipse today. I took a couple hundred that I'll sift through over the next day or two, but this one was immediately a standout. Let's see 'em!

It was raining and very overcast at my home near Houston so I just made my picture with Adobe Firefly AI.

Chris Summers said:

It was raining and very overcast at my home near Houston so I just made my picture with Adobe Firefly AI.

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Cracking shot! Great work!

A lot of retinas burned out.

My daughter and I had a miraculously fortunate eclipse chase.

We got out a bit later than we wanted to. Heading south towards Broken Bow/Eagletown, it became clear that the skies weren't going to cooperate and were pretty well overcast.

We finally decided to just pull over at Hugo as we didn't have enough time to get anywhere with clear skies. We ended up at the observation area at the base of the Hugo Dam. We figured if nothing else, that it would be a cool place to have lunch. And we'd still experience the darkness of totality.

866A6871-1 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

866A6884-1 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

The lens caps are still on the cameras. Just set up and waiting for a break in the clouds.

20240408-IMG_3092 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

Base camp.

20240408-IMG_3096 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

The skies were just a thick overcast. You couldn't even see the sun to tell where it was to point the cameras towards, and there was nothing to focus on.

Then, literally minutes before totality...seriously, like JUST two or three minutes before hand, the cloud cover opened up and we got to see the actual sun.

I got ONE single picture of the partial eclipse before totality. Which though partly covered by clouds, didn't turn out too bad.

20240408-866A6907 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

I shot the eclipse with my Canon EOS R6 mkII with a rented RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 lens and my Canon EOS R7 with RF 70-200 f/4 lens, both at full extension. I definitely should have sprung for the RF 1.4x or 2x extender units. I thought before hand that 500mm would be plenty, but I had to crop in quite a bit in post. Next time I'll know.

The R7 didn't do so well and didn't really lock on focus for basically any pictures, even thought the focus assist arrows indicated it was in focus.

I shot the event pictures with my Canon EOS RP with RF 24-70mm f2.8 lens.

866A6936-1 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

866A6945-1 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

The best shot I think, a diamond ring, captured totally by accident as I was fumbling to get the filter put back on at the end of totality.

866A6953-1 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

And some of the partial phases on the back end.

866A6970-1 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

866A7002-1 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

My ghetto home made filters with Thousand Oaks Optical solar film, during partiality.

20240408-IMG_3123 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

All in all, it was a good day, and we were happy with the experience we had and the pictures that I got.

Got home to NJ and clear skies about noon Monday. This was the last decent shot I got as the clouds rolled in.

Reworked a few with some more detailed post processing.

866A6936-3 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

866A6945 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

866A6953-Enhanced-NR-3 by Justice Bigler, on Flickr

Thanks so much all for sharing, both your stories and your images! It was cool to be part of something that people across the entire continent experienced.

I had similar conditions to what some other have described, with a lot of cloud cover giving way at almost the last minute to allow for some really tremendous views. I live within the path of totality, and my daughter and I were going to go outside for totality whether it was cloudy or not, since all it would require was just popping out to the front yard. I was watching NASA's livestream, and starting to feel a bit of FOMO when my wife, who works elsewhere in the city, started excitedly texting me that the cloud cover was breaking in her area, and that it was coming this way. We went out to check it out, and sure enough, more and more breaks in the clouds were allowing for the sun to shine through. Partiality was already well underway at this point, but by the time totality arrived, the sky was mostly clear. The clouds that did remain weren't thick enough to block visibility completely, and to my eye, made for far more dramatic and interested photos than if the sky had been perfectly clear.

I used my R8 with the RF 100-400 and the RF 2x extender, and I typically shoot straight to .jpeg out of camera, which I did in this case as well. This combo worked great in terms of reach, offering 800mm, but when totality came, it was too dark to really make clean images, being only f/ 16 even wide open. My ISO settings ended up pushing all the way to 80,000, which made for some pretty noisy (though still pretty cool) images. I could have used my tripod to enable slower shutter speeds, but I prefer shooting handheld wherever possible - it's just so much easier to move around or recompose. The R8 with that lens and extender combo still weighs less than 1.5kg, or just a bit over 3lbs, so it's hardly a burden. I also honestly didn't expect the light level to be quite so low! The noise in the full totality photo I've included here makes it look like a post-punk album cover to me, a pretty sweet aesthetic.

My kid and I had a really wonderful experience in the end, one that I'm still buzzing from several days later. Now that I've sifted through my images and cropped where needed, I've attached most of my favourites below. Thanks again for sharing, and for checking out mine as well. What an experience!

Man, those sunburst rays coming off that first totality shot are incredible. That’s large framed photo worthy for sure.