I was in northwest Ohio for the eclipse. The conditions were basically good, with high thin clouds but no low, opaque clouds. The entire eclipse showed through both visually and in images, though the clouds did diffuse the corona detail a bit.
I had two cameras running, one on a motorized star tracker and one on a tripod with heads arranged to provide manual tracking following the arc of the sun. One camera had a Canon R5 and EF 100-400 plus 1.4x extended. This camera was fully automated to shoot bracketed series very frequently during both partial and totality, hopefully for an eventual time lapse. The other camera was an R5 with the Canon RF 800 mm f/11. I shot manual sequences every so often during partial, a manually triggered 5-bracket sequence during transition, (madly triggered every second with a remote cable release!), and an automatically-running 7-bracket during totality.
I also had a camera set up at 16 mm to shoot the landscape. My son was responsible for starting the auto sequences and removing and replacing the filters on that one; there is no way I could have managed a third camera!. We will eventually collaborate on a composite of the partial and total phases overlaid on that landscape.
So far I have only attempted to develop the base landscape image at totality (which rewarded my son), and to work on the 800 mm shots during the transitions. Below is a sampling of those.
Landscape at Totality
Diamond Ring Just Before C2
Baily’s Beads at C2
Eastern Limb with Chromosphere and Prominences, just after C2
Western Limb Just Before C2
I think because the moon was closer to earth and therefore bigger than during other eclipses, it covered the chromosphere and most of the prominences except on the eastern and wester limbs near C2 and C3. That huge triangular one showed through all of totality, though.
Baily’s Beads Just Before C3
Stephen, as you noted, the Beads appeared a few seconds earlier than predicted by the simulator. My cameras clock was synchronized with my phone just before the eclipse began so I’m pretty confident in the time.
Third Contact Diamond Ring
Those of us in northwest Ohio (and probably other places) had a very sudden and exceedingly brilliant pinpoint of bright light appear right at C3, as the photosphere first burst through a low valley between mountains of the moon. I suspect that this diamond ring was the first vestige of that burst just tenths of a second before C3.
A Prominent Prominence
Just for fun I cropped the western limb image to 100% and used Topaz AI to upsize it 2x and do a little noise reduction.
So far I have not worked on the corona, and I’m not optimistic I’ll be able to pull out much detail because of the cloud diffusion. But I’ll follow up if I get anything worthwhile.
Dave