Solar Eclipse

For the recent Solar Eclipse, I ended up on a ranch south of Hay Springs, Nebraska. No crowds at this location. I was able to enjoy the event with my cousins.

To shoot the eclipse, I used a Canon Powershot SX60 with its long zoom. The 65x zoom lens has has a 35mm equivalence to a 21mm to  1365mm lens. While it's not as sharp as a good long lens, it fit my budget. I added a solar filter and good tripod.

For the two weeks before the eclipse, I practiced shooting the sun. While using the solar filter, my exposures were normally at 1/20th a second at f/8. I used 200 ISO. In Lightroom I was able to keep the yellow color and add some redish glow around the sun.

During the full eclipse, above right, I removed the solar filer and found that the Powershot SX60 zoom lens added nice flare around the sun.

After the eclipse, I started working in Lightroom on the images. In the middle of the sun was this series of four dust spots - image above left. I started cloning them out. Wrong - after checking other images online, they were sun spots.

I posted these images and more on flickr: 2017 Solar Eclipse.