 Hi, welcome back. I'm Nico, and this is part three on my series on preparing for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. This video is being released in mid-February, so we're a little under two months away. And I think you should start doing full practice runs at this point. So that's what I'm going to show in this video and the next couple videos, each for different kinds of equipment. You know, doing a series on YouTube is challenging because you can't really expect people to watch each part of the series. So then I'm torn between do I just repeat information in each part or just assume people will go back and watch the whole series. My compromise here is I'm going to do a very quick recap of what I've already talked about in the first couple videos. And then from the recap, you can decide if it's worth going back to those earlier videos where I do go into a lot more depth on those subjects. Okay, so in the first video, I talked about the experience of a total solar eclipse, why it's so important to be in the path of totality, why you need to plan well ahead of time for that, including making travel plans if needed, and additionally why having backup plans is a really good idea so that you can move along the path if it looks like last minute you're going to get clouded out due to the weather forecast. And for the April 8th eclipse, I'm planning to be in Texas due to historical weather data suggesting that Texas of all the US states is most likely to be clear in early April. In the second video, I reviewed pretty extensively the gear I suggest using for photographing the eclipse and broke that down into three different kits. A basic kit, this one right here that I'll be talking a lot more about today, and then a basic kit plus a tracker which helps track the sun and just lets you do a little bit more advanced things. And then finally, an advanced kit with a connected laptop and eclipse software loaded and a telescope if you want, all these kinds of things you might want to do if you have that kind of gear. And then also in the second video, I covered making your own custom solar filters. These are for the partial phases and then they're also really easy to remove for totality. And then they also of course have a custom fit for whatever lens or telescope you're going to be using. In this part, I'll be going over how to practice for the eclipse with this kit right here. This is kit number one, the basic kit for my previous video. In subsequent videos, I'll do of course practice runs with kit two and kit three, including with kit three, how to use scripting and automation software. To give you a little heads up on that though, I'm going to link the list in the description. This is a list of the current best options for scripting and automating the capture of the eclipse that are available today. I'll be personally using the first two in this list, which are the macOS options. But you can see that there are two options for Windows computers, Windows laptops, and then there's also an option for connecting your DSLR to your Android phone. And the reason I want to draw attention to this list now is you need to get one of these programs downloaded and start testing with your camera if you plan to use one of these. All of them work with various models of Canon cameras. Some of them also have Nikon support. I believe there's a couple that might have some Sony support, but you really have to check it out for yourself to see if your particular camera model is supported by the software that you want to use. I'm also working on a how to use smart telescopes for the eclipse, if that's what you plan to bring. It's not my primary plan, but I just wanted to make a video on it because I'm sure a lot of people will want to use those. And if I have enough time, I might do a couple other miscellaneous videos between now and eclipse day, but time is getting short, so no promises. And let's go ahead and get on with this one. In this video, I'll be running through how to do a full practice run with this basic kit, which is made up of a Canon DSLR, but you could use any DSLR or mirrorless camera that supports interval timing. So it could be an intervalometer or an app or something like that. You need a lens. It could be wide angle, it could be telephoto, depending on what you kind of shot you want to get. A tripod with a solid head, a solar finder, a solar filter, and a GPS connected smartphone with the solar eclipse timer app. And then finally, I would, you need some kind of shade so that you can see your camera screen. And then this is completely optional, but instead of shade, another option is you could get one of these magnified loops that lets you see your camera screen. I do find these pretty helpful, but again, this is an optional part. And I don't want you to just watch this video and feel like you've prepared for shooting the eclipse. I want you to actually get out and practice with this information, hopefully several times between now and the eclipse. Of course, you need a clear day so you can actually see the sun, but it should be possible to have enough time to get out there and practice this. So let's go through step by step what goes into a practice session with this kit here. And the first step is actually done inside on the computer, which is calculating exposure lengths for your particular gear and situation and writing those exposure lengths down. Okay, we're here on the computer. I'm going to show two tools. These are both created by Xavier Ubiere, who's a French eclipse expert. And he has created a lot of really nice tools for us eclipse chasers. This is an interactive Google map that does a bunch of stuff that I'll show a few key aspects of this. And then we're going to look at this first. And then second, we'll look at his shutter speed calculator. And this, as you can see, has all the different eclipse events listed. And so for a simple basic setup, you need at least two exposure lengths, right? You need one for the partial phase based on the type of filter that you have. And then you need one for totality, depending on which feature you want to go for. But I'll talk about this more in a second. Let's start here on the map. And these links are complicated. So I'm going to link both of these in the video description. So just look in the video description to get these links. Okay, so here's the map for the 2024 total solar eclipse. If you just hover over this, it just gives you some general information. But what we want to do is zoom in. And this just works like a normal Google map. So you can click and drag to move it around. And you're going to find your primary and you can also do this for your secondary locations, but your primary location for the eclipse. So let's say you were, you know, just outside of Waco, Texas here, I'll put us right here, you click on the map where you're going to be. And you don't have to click right in the center line, like you can click, you know, off of the center line and it will recalculate for that location. But let's say you're going to be right on the center line right near Waco, Texas here. It then gives you a bunch of information in this box. And it's, it gives you the start of the partial eclipse. That's called C1. That's that stands for first contact, contact one. And it means when the moon first is starts eclipsing the sun, start of total eclipse, C2, maximum eclipse, end of total eclipse, C3, and end of partial eclipse. This time is in universal time. If you want to see it in the local time zone of this spot, there's a little button over here. It's like a little clock button. And if you click it, if you hover over, it says turn on the time zone display. When you click it, you can see it converts the times to the local time there. So right outside of Waco, Texas, the start of the partial eclipse is going to start at 12 20 p.m. Max eclipse is going to be at 139 p.m. The total solar eclipse, the totality portion from C2 to C3 is going to take four minutes, 23 seconds at this location. This I would suggest writing down because it's important just to get an idea of like, well, how many shots can I actually take? So for a photographer, it's important to understand like, well, what can I really reasonably do in four minutes, 23 seconds in terms of number of shots? And we can practice this and sort of get a feel for it. It's also good to know just in terms of like, this is how long I can enjoy totality. I'm going to suggest that solar eclipse timer app and it's going to do all of this, it's going to talk you through all of this as well. But I'm just giving you this information because it's good to sort of see it all right now. And then this also has a key thing right here, which is the altitude of the sun. So you can see in Waco, Texas at Max Eclipse, the altitude of the sun is going to be about 66 degrees over the horizon. Now, if I zoom out to Maine, right as the eclipse is leaving the continental United States and I click right here, you can see here at Max Eclipse, the sun will only be 33 degrees over the horizon. Why is this important? A couple reasons. One, there's something called atmospheric extinction that can sort of change your exposure timing a little bit that we'll get into with the exposure calculator. And two, probably even more importantly is at 33 degrees, you're going to have to be pretty wary of the tree line, right? Lots of trees can get, especially in Maine, can get taller than 33 degrees. So you'll need to think about your horizon if you're up here in the northeast. Down in Texas, you're not going to have to worry about it. You know, 66 degrees, that's like pretty high up in the sky. There's not going to be any trees that tall. The only situation where you'd have to worry about that is if you were right in the city. If you're right in the city, avoid tall buildings. But otherwise, I think you're going to be fine in terms of no obstructions for the eclipse. It also means, though, because the sun is so high in the sky, any kind of wide field shot, like a wide angle shot with a wide angle lens, is going to be difficult. You need a really wide angle lens, like a fisheye, to get the horizon and the sun in the same shot. So just another thing to think about here while planning. Let's go to the exposure calculator. So this actually is more than just an exposure calculator. It also has a field of view calculator over here and some sampling information. So it has different boxes that do different things. But this is the main one we want to look at right here on the left. And so I'm going to keep us in Texas. So we'll put in 66 degrees for the altitude elevation of the observer. I think Texas is pretty flat. So I'll leave that at zero. Okay. Camera settings. I would recommend ISO 100, either 100 or 200, depending on sort of what you're trying to do. And but I'm going to leave it on 100. For the partial phase, you can see there are different types of filters here. The one that I have, the Baader Astrosolar film, is this one. It has an optical density of 5.0, which makes it, you know, a 100,000th filter. So I'm going to choose that. But if you have a different filter, you can choose from here. It should be listed. If you bought the filter, it should be listed somewhere on the packaging, which type it is. And in my case here, if I'm shooting at ISO 100 f8, it suggests a shutter speed of 1.800th of a second. So I'm going to write that down. If I'm at a different aperture, you can see if I was at f5.6, it's going to be a different shutter speed. f8 is good for this lens. So I'm going to use that 1.800th of a second f8 ISO 100, 1.800th of a second. So I'll write that down again for all the partial phases, which is from C1, the start of the eclipse, to C2, the start of totality, and then from C3, the end of totality, to C4, the end of the whole eclipse. Now there are a bunch of other events here. To try to get all of these, Baileys beads, prominences, diamond rings, corona, all these different aspects of the corona, I think you really need automation to get all of those. You can get more of them with bracketing, and bracketing just means instead of every time you hit the shutter button or have your intervalometer hit the shutter button, instead of taking one picture, your camera takes several pictures. It takes a picture with the shutter speed you designated, but then it can go one stop over, one stop under, two stops over, two stops under, and so forth. So this is very useful, especially for getting different kinds of shots of the corona. It doesn't help as much with Baileys beads and diamond rings because these are incredibly fast occurrences. They happen really quickly. It's like five seconds you get for Baileys beads or something, and so you have to take a lot of shots very quickly, and it's just hard to change your shutter speed for that and then change it back for the corona all in time and still enjoy the eclipse. So what I would suggest is if this is your first eclipse or you don't have automation, just skip all of this stuff, Baileys beads, diamond rings, and we're going to go straight from the partial phase up here, write this down, to down here, corona. What I'd suggest for most people is your second exposure length should be this one, this inner corona, this first inner corona, one-fiftieth of a second, if your camera has basic bracketing, which most DSLRs do. So what you're going to do is you're going to set your second shutter speed to one-fiftieth of a second, but have it bracket two stops in both directions, right? So one stop overexposed would be one-twenty-fifth of a second. That gets us to here, this inner corona, two stops overexposed would be one-twelfth of a second. So that almost gets us to middle corona. If we did three stops overexposed, that would get us to middle corona. If it can do four stops overexposed, that would get us to upper corona. So check out what your camera can do with bracketing, because you might be able to get all kinds of different corona shots just using this inner corona as a baseline. And then on the underexposed side, you could probably get down to, yeah, you can with two to three stops underexposed, you can get down to the lower corona, where I think from my experience with the 2017 Eclipse, the cool thing about this is you also will see the prominences. They won't be as well exposed as this, you know, one-sixteen-hundredth of a second, but they'll still be quite visible. I'll show one on screen now just to show you what I mean at one-four-hundredth of a second. Okay, so I know this is, hopefully this hasn't been too confusing. Let me try to simplify it. Put in your altitude, put in your ISO, put in your lens aperture, right? Then I want you to write down two things, if you're doing this basic kit, the partial phase shutter speed for your particular filter, and this one, inner corona under 0.2 solar radius, one-fiftyth of a second. That's it. So for me at ISO 100 f8, I'm writing down one-eight-hundredth and one-fiftyth. Okay, while we're on the computer, let me just show a couple more things here. So this is pretty cool, this miscellaneous camera information. Let's say you have a Canon APS-C and you're going to be using a focal length of 300 millimeters. So it will show you what it's going to look like. It's like a visualization tool with your particular camera sensor and focal length. It will also give you the field of view and degrees and exposure limit without blurring, basically, if you're not using tracking, which you wouldn't be with a basic kit. Now this field of view calculator thing here reminds me that someone sent me this tool that they made. This is really cool, Nickel B. So this is very similar to this tool, except they added one really cool thing, which is you can turn on this checkbox right here, Earth's rotation, and it will actually show you in real time how long it will take on your particular camera sensor and focal length for the sun to leave the frame. So this is really helpful because what you can do with this, let me reload this site. So I'm going to put in that same thing I had here, APS-C 300. Okay, what you can do with this is you can turn it on and it gives you an idea of, okay, if I was taking pictures and the sun was centered, how long is it going to take before I have to reframe, before the sun hits the edge of my frame here. And you can time this using this tool. What I'd recommend is also, once we get into the practice session, time it with your particular equipment to make double check. But this is a really nice way to sort of visualize what the corona is going to look like, what the totality is going to look like with your particular gear, and without tracking how long it will take to leave your field of view. Okay, so next up, we need a sunny day. Today, it's a sunny and windy day as you might be hearing and seeing my hair blow all around. And we get outside with all of our gear assembled like this. And of course, it's very important to have the proper solar filter installed because we're going to try focusing on the actual sun, whether it's a DIY film-based filter like this that I showed how to make in part two, or a glass filter like this cool magnetic one from Freewell. Whatever kind of solar filter you have, it has to be an approved safe solar filter. And I should mention here that some people on my previous video commented about adding a string to the DIY filter. And I think that's a great idea. So I've added that here. The advantage to this is you can take the filter off, let it drop, and it's it has a place during totality, then it's you know exactly where it is, you just put it right back on. Instead of having to like take it off and then find a place to put it safely, this is much easier. So I do recommend this putting a string if you have the custom solar filter like this, and then it's just attached to my camera here. Okay, with the solar filter installed on the lens, we need to find the sun. And for that, I'm using this downspout clip from Home Depot just taped onto the camera here. And I found this works quite well as a finder. You just line up this bright circle of the sun coming through the front hole with the back hole. And then it should be fairly easy to find the sun in live view on your camera screen. Once you have it on screen, go ahead and put in the right exposure setting that we calculated earlier. For me at f7 ISO 100, that was one eight hundredth of a second. And next, we're going to practice focusing. And this will be the thing that you'll likely find most challenging and worthy of practicing. Because even when we have nice sunspots to focus on like today, it's just difficult. But with practice, it does become easier. What you want to do is make sure your lens is on manual focus. And then you'll zoom in with the digital zoom feature in live view on your camera on the sunspot. Hopefully there's a sunspot. And then carefully move the manual focus ring until you have the most contrast between the sunspot and the solar surface. So it's a white and black kind of thing. And the sunspot will look black, the solar surface will look white. And you'll also notice that when you're in focus that the edge of the sun will look pretty sharp. When you're out of focus, it'll look much softer. And you sort of get used to seeing that and sort of knowing, okay, I think I'm in focus because that solar edge looks nice and sharp. Now, one of the other big challenges are reflections on your camera screen. I found this even in filming this, that the reflections really are difficult to manage. So another thing to practice here is how you want to handle that, whether it's a magnifying loop like this, which just goes right onto the screen. And then you look through or some kind of sun umbrella like this one, or something else, maybe a canopy or something. Some modern cameras will have Wi-Fi built into the camera and an app. So that may help because then you're able to preview what's going on on your camera on your phone. And then you could get away from the camera under a canopy or a tent set up and really see it. The key here, though, is to practice. Figure out what works for you for focusing and feeling confident that you're in focus even on a bright sunny day like this. Now, if this was a clips day, we would be doing all of this before what's called first contact. So what does that mean? C1 or first contact is when the moon first starts covering the sun. So I highly recommend the Solar Eclipse Timer app, which is free to download. It does cost $1.99 to load in the April 8th Eclipse data, which you need to do. So it's really like a $2 app, but it's well worth that price. What the app will do is it will use your phone's GPS to figure out where you are on the path of totality. And it will also know the time, of course, from satellite data that's beaming down to your phone. And then it will give you voice announcements for the different Solar Eclipse events like first contact. Second contact in two minutes, observe for shadow bands. So what does first contact look like if we take a photo of it? It would look something like this. You can see the moon is just barely in front of the sun. It just takes out a little sliver of the sun there. And the reason to start photographing it now is you might want to do a composite picture showing the whole event of the whole Eclipse event from the partial phases to totality to the partial phases on the end. And actually, even if you can't make it to the path of totality, you can still capture these partial phases. You just would be shooting with the filter the whole time. You just need one exposure length and you just capture the whole thing of the moon passing in front. You just don't get that perfect alignment of the moon over the sun, where we can see the solar corona and everything if you're not in the path of totality. It takes a few hours for the whole event to happen. So for the partial phases, which go from first contact to second contact, or sometimes called C1 to C2, and then from third contact to fourth contact or C3 to C4, you're going to have your solar filter installed on. And you'll use the exposure we calculated for the partial phases with your solar filter on. I'd suggest taking a photo every five to 10 minutes during the partial phases, which is plenty of material, even if you have some that aren't so great out of focus, you still can have enough to fill in to make a good composite photo. To practice shooting totality ahead of time, we definitely can't be actually pointed at the sun. So this is very important. I don't want anyone to take off the filter and damage their camera. The only time you can point your camera or your eyes at the sun is if you're in the path of totality and during that short period of totality, a few minutes, and you need something like the Eclipse Timer app or beat an event where people are telling you when that's going to happen. All other times you cannot look at the sun without proper eye protection or point your camera at the sun without a proper filter. Got it? Okay. So if you're practicing, what could you do? Well, one thing you could do is just point your camera away, just pointed at the blue sky. And then we can still practice taking off the filter, changing the exposure, the interval time, all that kind of stuff. So at 10 minutes out from second contact, what I'd recommend doing is carefully focusing one last time, changing your other settings for totality. So at this point, you're going to set your shutter speed on the camera using that time we figured out earlier on the computer for totality based on what you want to capture. Turn on auto bracketing on the camera. If you're doing this method and your camera supports auto bracketing, I highly suggest it. And of course, this is great for totality because the brightness of the corona is actually different for every Eclipse and also we see different things with different exposure lengths. But all these exposure recommendations are just sort of guidelines for getting you right sort of in the middle, right? And there's some variation from Eclipse to Eclipse. But by bracketing up and down, it can help us make sure that we're going to get at least some correct exposure, something you're really happy with. But if you bracket your shots, of course, you're going to need to allow more time with the interval timer or intervalometer to allow for it to record three shots to the memory card for each exposure, right? So for the interval on the intervalometer, if you're bracketing, I'd recommend trying, you know, a picture every five to 10 seconds. If you're using a DSLR, that should give it enough time to settle down a little bit from the mirror slap that causes a little bit of vibration and also write the files, the three files to the SD card. But the exact time depends on the speed of your card and the speed of your camera buffer. So at this point, I would definitely practice this and try to nail down what's the correct interval for your system. At two to three minutes out from second contact, I position the sun so that at max eclipse, it's going to be centered in frame. And to calculate that, you can use that moonzoom.world webpage I showed you earlier. But of course, I'd recommend during this practice session, actually test that see if you put the sun on the edge of the frame and wait till it gets to the center, how long does that take, and then calculate that backwards from max eclipse to when you should put it on the edge. So hopefully that makes sense. It's like if it takes, let's say three minutes to get from the edge of your frame to the center of your frame, you would want to put it the sun on the edge of your frame one minute before totality starts, assuming we have a four minute totality. The sun is drifting into the center. You're just waiting for the announcements to remove your eclipse glasses. At that point, you can remove your eclipse glasses. You can remove this filter on front of your camera and start your intervalometer to start taking the pictures. Now, why do I say to wait until the app says to remove your eclipse glasses rather than the announcement to remove the filter, which is actually about 15, 20 seconds earlier. The filter removal announcement is for people that are trying to capture the diamond ring and Bailey's beads, which are two, I'd say more advanced features of the eclipse that I personally only recommend trying to go after if you have automation software because they're very particular in the timing. So unless you've done lots of eclipses before or using automation software, I wouldn't recommend it. If this is your first eclipse, definitely I wouldn't go after those. Just wait until the announcement that it's, you know, totality is actually started. You can take off your glasses, remove your filter and start taking pictures then because you're going for pictures of the corona, which doesn't start until the totality actually starts. And that's when you can start your intervalometer. Then during totality, which for this eclipse is over four minutes, if you're on the center line, what I recommend is just enjoying it visually with your eyes. A lot of people have commented on my previous videos. You can never look at the sun with the naked eye. That is not true. The one time you can do it is during a total solar eclipse, on the path of totality, during totality. That's the one time it's safe to do it and it's the way to experience totality if you're in that situation. If you're unsure if you're in that situation, don't do it. If you are in, you know, if you're not on that path, you can't do it. So just be really safe here. But I'm telling you, if you're very sure that you're in the path of totality and totality has started, it's going to get dark. You'll see it. It's going to get really dark and you'll be able to look at the eclipsed sun. Why is this safe? Because the moon completely covers up the sun. That's why we can see the solar corona, right? The atmosphere basically of the sun is because the actual disc of the sun is completely covered up by the moon. Just soak in seeing totality. That's a once in a lifetime experience. You definitely want the app or be in an event so you can know when to put back on your glasses, when to put back on your solar filter here. And, you know, you don't want to sort of have to wait for that. You want to actually hear it so that you know when to do it and you can stay safe that way. Then it's back to the partial phase. So you have to change your settings back to your exposure setting for the partial phase if you want to capture the whole event. And I'd probably also refocus at that point because we have a big temperature drop during totality and then it's going to get warmer again. So focus might shift a little bit. So I would recheck focus. Okay, and that's it for really practicing. You can also practice on the moon during the night. It's a little bit more relaxed. It's fun if you're already a nighttime ask a photographer. But I'd suggest doing more practice during the day because this is where a lot of the more annoying aspects like reflections on the screen, trying to focus with the solar filter really come into play. That's what I feel like is really you have to really practice. The last thing I'll briefly talk about in this video is the images you can expect from what I just showed this with this kit and what to do with them. So based on what we just went through, you should hopefully have a bunch of images of the partial phases, you know, after the actual event and a bunch of images of totality and the sun's corona. And one thing you'll notice with the partial phase images, if you're using a DIY solar filter like this with the Bader Astro Solar film is that the sun is actually white or colorless. And this is actually correct for our star, the sun. But if you'd rather see it like an orange color, like what we experience at sunset, you can colorize your photos with something like Photoshop quite easily. So just to show you that if you want to make your sun in the partial phases orange, what you can do is you load the photo in here, you apply what's called a hue slash saturation adjustment layer, you click the colorize checkbox, and then you set the hue and saturation until the sun looks orange. And there are some solar filters on the market that will actually do this coloration in camera. But it's very easy to do with all kinds of post-processing software. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. And the white light solar filter actually is the more accurate one. And then if you are doing a composite photo, it would just be about selecting several different photos throughout the whole thing, arranging them in one canvas in Photoshop, and to show the whole progression of the eclipse. I'll do more full length processing videos down the road, but I just wanted to give you a taste of what to expect with this kind of setup, what this is all for. You're now seeing everyone who supports this channel through my Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash nebula photos. My Patreon starts at just $1 a month and there are a bunch of benefits. As promised, the newest benefit that's related to eclipses and finding a clear sky for the next eclipse is everyone who joins my Patreon will get one month of Astrospheric Pro for free, leading up to the total solar eclipse in April. And this is really cool because Astrospheric Pro is the absolute best way for us astrophotographers to find clear and steady skies. It's a forecast tool designed specifically for astronomy. And with the Pro version, you get the Ensemble Cloud Forecast on Astrospheric Pro, which is a crucial tool for getting a clear picture of upcoming clouds. The Ensemble Cloud Forecast is composed of multiple high quality models serving North America, and it allows us to quickly view the variance between models as well as where they agree. And when all models agree, we can then feel a lot more confident in the predictions. You know, I wish this had existed or I knew about it at least for the 2017 eclipse because I was a bit all over the place looking at various cloud forecasts and not knowing which to believe. Well, with the Ensemble Forecast, you can really get a good sense of where the models actually agree it will be clear. And as the solar eclipse approach, it will be possible to overlay the eclipse paths with Astrospheric's Advanced Ensemble Forecast. So again, this is now free for all my Patreon members, and the instructions to get that set up are already posted on my Patreon page. There's going to be several more videos in this eclipse series, so there will be a few more chances to take advantage of this. But I would suggest getting on to my Patreon now so you can also take advantage of the excellent community that's very supportive, and we're all really dedicated astrophotographers, and so I think you'll have a lot of fun over there. So until next time, this has been Nico Carver, Clear Skies.