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Solar Eclipse Film


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Hello, I'm thinking about doing a short film (and I mean FILM) on the upcoming solar eclipse and of course, it won't be complete without the eclipse itself. The last time I tried to shoot an eclipse was on video and it was horrible. The contrast is unbelievable, going from pure white and blooming all over the place to almost pitch black, even stacks of ND filters don't work. I know there's metal coated filters for photographing the sun but that would be too dark during the transit. So, how is it done? I assume I'll have to adjust the iris during filming of course, probably as a time-lapse.

 

I'll likely be shooting Kodak 7203, probably with an 85mm prime if that helps.

Thanks!

Edited by Stephen Baldassarre
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  • 1 month later...

May be i read your post too late and your solar eclipse is already gone. Well, whatever camera you will use , video or film, since it is a total backlight you will get always heavy contrast picture, only white disk (sun) and only black (moon) disk. Anyway, i would go in this way: use a double polarizer filter and rotate one of these till you can easily see the sun with your eye (BE VERY C-A-R-E-F-U-L !). Then use a telephoto lens that can fill the frame with sun disk. Adjust exposure either by slighty rotating one of the polarizers and or setting iris . You can test it with a videocamera before to shot film. Hope it helps

Edited by Roberto Pirodda
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You're not too late at all; the eclipse is in August. There's no practicing with a video camera though since there aren't any eclipses between now and then (and it's only a 2-minute event). I shot one on video a few years ago with multiple NDs and two polarizers. It was a disaster. I did get a 16.5 stop ND filter for this one, which will help at least.

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Well, i was meaning to practice with sun only, to test exposure. Remember that the less glasses you put in front of the lens the better. I upload a test i made just now with a 1/2.3 inch video camera and 200 mm tele lens (iris at f11) with 2 polarizers . The picture is slighty out of focus because these polarizers distort image quality, i can figure how much bad can be with multiple ND filters !

post-39610-0-90643300-1491806493_thumb.jpg

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Well, i was meaning to practice with sun only, to test exposure. Remember that the less glasses you put in front of the lens the better.

Oh yes, I definitely plan to do that. If I can get away with JUST the 16.5 stop ND and use the iris for fine adjustments, so much the better.

I have a Canon G20, which is natively about 50 ISO and I plan to shoot 7203, though film has WAY better latitude.

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