First time shooting the sun, practicing for tomorrow

[John Cothron]

Hello everyone,

Prelude for tomorrow. This is the first time I've shot the sun. I used Baader Solar film to make a filter. I'm basically practicing for tomorrow. I ended up liking what appeared to be underexposed images which I then brought up in post. I also adjusted the white balance to around 10k or so. I think I got focus pretty good (although that is a challenge). Processing was quite a bit different than what I am used to. I'd love to hear your thoughts, advice, or pointers if you have them! This is very near 100% of the image. It is downsized less than 10%.

 ***There are some small white dots all around the sun. Considering the ISO and shutter speed I wouldn't think those are hot pixels or anything. Stars? I'm clueless but it is interesting.

[Telecaster]

Looks good! I'd back off on the sharpening a bit, but that's just my taste. I've also found through trial & error that keeping exposure down and pulling up highlights a bit to taste in post gives a better (to my eyes anyway) result. In early test shots I was clipping the red channel a lot.

I've tried manual and auto-focus with my chosen lens (Panasonic 100–400mm on a GX8 camera) and have decided to go with AF for the eclipse. I put the focus point at the sun/sky boundary, which seems to work pretty well. Though earlier this afternoon I AF'd on the central sunspot area and that worked too. I set the self-timer at 10 secs followed by a 3-shot burst. There's some wind here today so about half the shots showed some blur at 1/320 sec.

I've set white balance down ~2800K: still gives a warm result but not baked. 

I also see some hot pixels in my pics, normally not visible at all. Not likely stars: the sun is intense and so exposure times are too short.

For kicks I took an infrared shot today via a 900nm (or so) low-pass filter and have attached it. This works but doesn't really offer anything worth doing again.

Clear skies!

-Dave-

[Bob_B]

I've been testing as well. This series was taken with a 100mm lens on a Canon 7D at 3 minute intervals. ISO 100, f/11, 1/400 for those interested. Stacked and lightly processed in PS.