It started several months ago. I was curious as to when the next eclipse would be, so I looked it up, and with Google, found this site, that included the path of totality, down to the foot.
Then I started learning "how to photograph the eclipse". I bought the things I thought could help me, and they all did. As I referenced in the gallery blurb, during totality I ran a continuous series of 11-shot sets, each with changing shutter speeds.
The series that was closest to the middle of totality consisted of shutter speeds of 1/640, 1/320, 1/160, 1/80, 1/40, 1/25, 1/13, 1/6, 1/3, 1/2, and 1 second. The last of that bunch was too bright, so I decided work with the first ten from that series, hoping to create a composite.
The best resource I came across was www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/e_comp.html, Jerry Lodriguss' Astrophotography Site's "Catching the Light" article . Though the information may be a decade or so old, it really hasn't aged. He talked about the "Pellett Method" of adding, subtracting and otherwise manipulating data from varying exposures of an eclipse, producing a beautifully enhanced composite photo.
I will say, it takes a lot of practice, and lots of trial and error. Ultimately, my recipe consisted of:
1. Cropping the raw images to 8x10 inches, and increasing the resolution from 300dpi to 1200. (600 would've been a quicker option!), The rings have to be arranged exactly on top of each other. That's a very important part - two or three pixels off on three images messed me up on my first try.
2. Following the subtract and add steps from the Pellett Method, at which point I had "cropped", "blurred" and "subtracted" image files for each of the ten shots.
3. Per Pellett's Method, I added the ten "subtracted" files into a single "subtracted composite" file.
4. Brought the ten "cropped" images back into Photoshop as layers, and stacked and saved them as "mean".
5. Added the "subtraction composite" image to the "mean" image, with a opacity level of 10-20 percent. (This is more of a "salt to taste" thing. You might like 35 percent, or 5 percent.)
6. The only thing I added - I grabbed the moon from a shot I took a year ago, resized it, lowered the brightness and opacity, and stuck it on top, leaving just a faint whisper of its surface.
Here's the final image, please comment below - would love to know what you think!
Then I started learning "how to photograph the eclipse". I bought the things I thought could help me, and they all did. As I referenced in the gallery blurb, during totality I ran a continuous series of 11-shot sets, each with changing shutter speeds.
The series that was closest to the middle of totality consisted of shutter speeds of 1/640, 1/320, 1/160, 1/80, 1/40, 1/25, 1/13, 1/6, 1/3, 1/2, and 1 second. The last of that bunch was too bright, so I decided work with the first ten from that series, hoping to create a composite.
The best resource I came across was www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/e_comp.html, Jerry Lodriguss' Astrophotography Site's "Catching the Light" article . Though the information may be a decade or so old, it really hasn't aged. He talked about the "Pellett Method" of adding, subtracting and otherwise manipulating data from varying exposures of an eclipse, producing a beautifully enhanced composite photo.
I will say, it takes a lot of practice, and lots of trial and error. Ultimately, my recipe consisted of:
1. Cropping the raw images to 8x10 inches, and increasing the resolution from 300dpi to 1200. (600 would've been a quicker option!), The rings have to be arranged exactly on top of each other. That's a very important part - two or three pixels off on three images messed me up on my first try.
2. Following the subtract and add steps from the Pellett Method, at which point I had "cropped", "blurred" and "subtracted" image files for each of the ten shots.
3. Per Pellett's Method, I added the ten "subtracted" files into a single "subtracted composite" file.
4. Brought the ten "cropped" images back into Photoshop as layers, and stacked and saved them as "mean".
5. Added the "subtraction composite" image to the "mean" image, with a opacity level of 10-20 percent. (This is more of a "salt to taste" thing. You might like 35 percent, or 5 percent.)
6. The only thing I added - I grabbed the moon from a shot I took a year ago, resized it, lowered the brightness and opacity, and stuck it on top, leaving just a faint whisper of its surface.
Here's the final image, please comment below - would love to know what you think!