Total Solar Eclipse
Sheldon VT
Images
I also have a static GoPro video from a few minutes before totality to a few minutes after, uploaded to YouTube for hosting, and three phone videos in a Google Photos gallery slowly panning around 360 degrees: one 20 minutes before totality to show the overall scene and two others during totality:
The inital image is processed quickly from a single exposure chosen from a bracket as the brightest that doesn’t clip highlights. The next three versions are 9-shot exposure/signal-to-noise-ratio brackets stacked with Kandao Raw+ and processed to emphasize either prominences, fine coronal detail, or the corona overall. The next two involve a local adjustment to darken the moon, as any detail there is below the noise floor. The second of those (sixth overall) is an HDR image via an embedded gain map to allow people without compatible hardware and software to show a somewhat reasonable version but be significantly more realistic to anyone who can see the full version (targeted to about 3 EV above SDR white).
All are from the same sequence toward the later stages of totality. Solar prominences are visible in the lower right third or so of the edge of the sun, which is where the “diamond ring effect” happens shortly after this. Shot approximately 600 m/2000 ft from the center line of the eclipse. Technical details: Sony α7RV camera body, Sony FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS @ 600 mm f/6.3 ISO 320; the single exposure is 1/500 s and brackets are 1 EV increments from 1/4000 to 1/15 s. Editing: global tone adjustments (brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, black point, white point, local contrast), daylight white balance, color and luminence noise reduction, cropping to 5000 × 5000 px, AI noise reduction in unstacked version. Lens front-focused here, so fine details aren’t sharp.
Please feel free to share these photos with others. I can provide higher resolutions or other variations if anyone wants. Better versions may follow as I make more local adjustments, attempt different processing methods, and other refinements; I just want to get basic versions up so people can see it. I’ll also do more HDR versions, but at this point many people are not able to view such images due to hardware and software compatibility. I’m not highly experienced with astrophotography, and processing the images is a learning process. The eclipse was a magical experience! I talk about photographic aspects here, but it was emotionally moving.