TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Whether you’re trying to capture a memory with your phone camera or you have a fancy DSLR camera, there are a few things to consider before snapping that photo.
Camera phone
It is NOT safe to photograph the partial eclipse with a phone without a filter. There are filters made for your smartphone, some even come with an app specifically designed to help you take a better eclipse photo. Be careful when looking up to take a picture, eyes can be damaged by looking into the sun.
A tripod can be very useful during an eclipse. keeping the camera steady and reducing the possibility of blur in your images. You may want to change the settings on your camera to increase the delay between pressing the photo button and the moment the photo is taken (delayed shutter release) so that you don’t move the camera and cause blur.
If you are traveling in the path of totality, you can try to take a photo without a filter ONLY during totality. You’ll want to disable the flash before the big moment, and this review suggests skipping the zoom because quality suffers greatly during digital zoom. Some models photograph everything well in “portrait mode”.
The same scheme suggests that you may need to lock the focus of your photo to get a great shot, on the iPhone you do this by aiming and holding the area you want in focus for a few seconds and then, “with low light levels just Before totality, the key is exactly when and how to do it. Once just a glimmer of the sun is visible in your eclipse glasses and it starts to get dark around you, focus your camera on something in the middle distance—perhaps a tree, a building, or a bridge on a cruiser. Then you can move the shutter up- down to control the shutter speed — you’ll probably want to lower it.”
Burst mode can be your friend, maybe it will help you capture Bailey’s Beads or diamond ring effect. Another setting that might be helpful, check if your phone has the ability to shoot in RAW mode, which is the unprocessed version of the image and sometimes much higher quality. There are third-party apps that allow you to shoot in RAW mode. Post-processing of RAW images is where low-light situations really come in handy.
DSLR cameras
To photograph the eclipse safely with a DSLR, you will also need special filters. Most of the great eclipse photos you see use a zoom lens. A tripod, larger aperture, and slower shutter speed would also be a great place to start when choosing the perfect eclipse shot.
Fun in the foreground
There are some serious professionals who really have fun photographing eclipses. Surfers may be familiar with Brazilian surfer Italo Ferreira, who worked with photographer Marcelo Maragni to capture a unique photo of him in front of the annular eclipse that he now displays on the back of his surfboard. You can see the photo better at universemagazine.com.