I’m now getting around to working on the landscape view of the eclipse that my son and I collaborated on shooting. I wasn’t going to shoot a landscape at all, since the sun would be so high in the sky that a very wide angle would be needed, and consequently the sun would be tiny. But IO decided to go ahead and set up a camera just to record a wide angle partial sequence and then the scene at totality, and see what I could do with it later. My son managed that camera which allowed me to focus on the long lens and transition shots.
Here is the view of the actual landscape at the height of totality. The eclipse is a reduced version of the corona that I got with my long lens, composited into the correct position in the sky and shown roughly double the size of the eclipse in the original wide angle shot.
I was struck by the twilight coloration of the sky on the edges of the eclipse shadow. This would have made a decent sunset scene without an eclipse! I guess that while the high thin clouds diffused the detail in the eclipse itself, they also provided the means to add more color interest to the scene.
When I get time I plan on adding a sequence of partials on either side of the totality image.
I think this looks great - very artfully done. Can I ask, what was the focal length of the wide shot?
I did an article on a painting of the July 8 1842 eclipse and found that the equivalent focal length of the scene was ~14mm and that the artist had painted the Sun/Moon at around 8x real size - sounds excessive, but they still look reasonably sized.
Thanks, Stephen. It was my 16-35, and I thought I was going to have to shoot at 16 mm, but from the exif it looks like I was able to get it to 17 mm. If I recall I think I decided that I didn’t need to get the first few minutes of the partial at the top of the frame, so I narrowed it a bit.
Very tempting!! I have a reservation for Mallorca. Wide angle Strand of Pearls into the Med would be my only shot, I think. Might actually get to sit back and watch the eclipse this time!! Less stress. That, and a naked eye partial!!
That’s a beautiful image! I’m planning a full-length sequence as well, but without any landscape setting. I have all the images, taken at 400mm. I have plotted the pathway through the sky by taking the timestamps on my images – I made sure they were precisely timed for this shoot – and then using the Ephemeris to record angle of elevation and horizontal displacement. I’ll have to fudge it a little to get it to fit on a reasonably sized canvas in Photoshop.
