 This video is sponsored by Squarespace. Welcome back. This is the second part of my series on preparing to photograph a total solar eclipse. While these videos are gonna be applicable to any total solar eclipse, I'm specifically preparing for the one coming up on April 8th, 2024, here in North America. And in the first part of this series, I covered location, weather forecasts, and the importance of backup plans. And I actually have a really exciting update and special offer about weather forecasting specifically for the eclipse. So stay tuned all the way to the end of the video and you can hear about that. But the main thing I'm gonna be doing in this part is covering the equipment needed for photographing a total solar eclipse. And one essential piece of equipment for photographing one is a solar filter for your lens or telescope. And I'll be showing you how to make this inexpensive custom white light solar filter for your camera lens or telescope using Baader Astro Solar Film. And in terms of other equipment, I'll walk through. I'm gonna show like a few different setups, something simple like this to something more complex. And with all the setups, I'm gonna show my goal is to create a setup so that when it comes time for totality, all you have to do is listen for an audio cue that's gonna alert you to take your solar filter off like that and when to put it back on at the end of totality. And other than that, your camera is gonna snap away and you can focus on just viewing totality, not fiddling with your camera settings. Because believe me, you're going to want to view totality just naked eye. It is something that you'll never forget. But that reminds me, there is something that I need to address near the beginning of this video because it maybe was a little confusing in the first part. So I'm gonna take my time with this because it is important and that topic is eye safety during a total solar eclipse. I had some comments on the first video in the series saying you need to keep your solar eclipse glasses on the whole time during a total solar eclipse. And there's some confusion here. I think what's going on is that these people commenting maybe in the last one in 2017 were outside of the path of totality. So they just saw a partial eclipse. And in that case, it's true. You have to keep your solar glasses, eclipse glasses on the whole time. But if you're in the path of totality during the period of totality, which is just a few minutes, the moon will completely cover up the sun. And it's the one time you can absolutely safely look at the eclipse sun naked eye. So if you're positive that you're in the path and that you know when to take your glasses off and put them back on, then and only then it is perfectly safe to view totality naked eye. And in fact, that's the only way to really see it. So for the rest of this video, I'm gonna assume that you have done enough research to really know that you're in the path or witnessing a total solar eclipse. And you know, you've done the research to know when you can take the glasses off and the filter off. And I'll show you actually in just a second, there's an app that you can use to do that or you might be at an eclipse party where that information is announced to everyone because that would happen at most eclipse parties. So I know I'm belaboring this a little bit, but I just wanna make this crystal clear. The information in this video is only applicable to a total solar eclipse, not an annular eclipse like we're having coming up in October, not a partial eclipse like you would get before and after totality or outside of the path of totality. In all those cases, you need to keep your glasses and filters on the whole time. So this video is only relevant if you're going to be in the path and prepared to know when totality starts and ends for your particular location. So how do you know when that's gonna happen? How do you know the different phases and when they start and end for a particular location? Well, there's lots of information available online that you can research ahead of time, including interactive Google Maps, which I'll link in the description. But I also wanna give a shout out to Gordon who developed the Solar Eclipse Timer app, which is available for both iOS and Android. And it's a super easy and intuitive way to stay safe during a total solar eclipse because it's going to tell you exactly when to take off your eclipse glasses and when to put them back on for your particular location. And it's gonna do so audibly, talking you through the eclipse events. First contact in 60 seconds. Gordon also has his own YouTube channel and book about the eclipse to help you get prepared. You can get the app and all these other resources at solareclipstimer.com. So for a first piece of equipment, a smartphone with the Solar Eclipse Timer app or some other kind of app is going to be a great thing to have for most of the setups that I'm gonna be going over and that I would imagine. In some of the advanced setups, including one I'll show today, you'll be tethering your camera to a laptop that has eclipse software running on it. And that software is gonna have all the same functions of the app plus it will control your camera settings. So in that case, it wouldn't be necessary. But a tethered laptop, that's gonna be probably not for everyone. So I'm guessing that most people would make good use of an app, which is free to download the Solar Eclipse Timer app, but it's $1.99 to unlock everything you're gonna need for the 2024 eclipse. Okay, so let's really dive into the equipment now. And I'm gonna break this into three kits. I'll first give an overview of the kits and then I'll break them down one by one, talking about all the different parts. So kit one, which is right here, is for the photographer who wants to get at least one good shot of the eclipse with normal photography gear for the most part. They don't wanna put a huge amount of money or extra effort into this. So I'm just using a normal camera, a lens, a tripod, an intervalometer, or there might be one built into your camera, a cheap solar filter and a cheap solar finder and the Eclipse Timer app. Kit two is for the astrophotographer or Milky Way shooter, someone who is already maybe into astrophotography or wants to be and has access to everything here, but also a sky watch or star adventurer or other star tracker. And they maybe haven't done much solar photography before, but they're interested in getting a shot like this where you have a sequence of all the partial phases as well as a good shot of the corona. And this kit is of course very similar to kit number one, except we've added a tracker, which is gonna make it much easier to get more good shots over the course of the event since we're now tracking the sun, meaning it stays roughly centered on our camera for the whole event, without having to manually track using your tripod. And then kit number three is for people that are planning to drive to the eclipse, because it's a lot of stuff. And in addition to everything else I've already mentioned, we now have a telescope, a battery, a computer with eclipse automation software, a go-to equatorial mount, and a few other little extras, a GPS receiver. And this person would probably call themselves an astrophotographer or maybe just an eclipse nut. And they wanna capture not only the partial phases and the corona, but also more obscure features of the eclipse like Bailey's Beads, the diamond ring, maybe Earth Shine, the outer corona, all of this kind of stuff. And to do that, you really should use computer automation. That's what I did in 2017. I plan to do it again in 2024. But that all requires a lot more preparation because it's a much more complex setup. And with complexity, a lot more can go wrong. So I have all these kits up on kit.co with the link in the description if you wanna explore them in more detail. In addition to what I've mentioned so far, there are a few things you're gonna want no matter what kind of photography rig you bring, more general things. You're gonna want plenty of water. And don't wait to the last minute to stock up on water. It might be hard to get, especially if you're going somewhere remote. It's a good idea to bring your own shade because you're probably gonna be out on some kind of field and it gets hot. You're gonna be there a long time. At least a hat, but for more complex setups, I'd actually also recommend some kind of sun umbrellas or a canopy or tent. And that will help you see what you're doing if you're using a laptop. And then with all of these kits, you're gonna want approved Eclipse glasses for everyone in the party and camera filters for any telescope or camera lens you'll be using. So that's the overview. Let's now break down these kits starting with kit number one right here. For this kit, you're gonna want a decent tripod. I prefer a fluid head. Like this is like a video head which makes it really easy to track the sun. But a ball head could work as well. Use whatever's available to you that you know will work well. The camera can be whatever camera you have. It can be mirrorless. It can be DSLR, it doesn't matter. But ideally it's gonna have the option either internally or externally with a connected intervalometer to take a sequence of exposures. So you don't have to actually be touching the shutter button for it to be taking pictures. You don't want that. And that way during totality, your camera is gonna be clicking away, getting good shots of the Eclipse while you can just enjoy the experience. But leading up to totality, we're gonna need to do two things. During the partial phase of the Eclipse when the moon is just starting to cover the sun. One, we need to find the sun. And for that, I have this little three inch by four inch aluminum downspout clip that I got for $1.50 from Home Depot. And it's very easy to attach to any kind of setup because it's so light. You can just tape it on top of a DSLR like this or Velcro it somewhere on a telescope. And the way to use this is you just move it around with your camera pointed generally in the direction of the sun until you see the light from the sun directly coming through this hole and hitting the back of the downspout clip. And then you just line up the two holes. It's very easy. It works really well. And then you should be able to see the sun on your DSLR screen. Or if not, it will be very close to being in view. If you're at a very high focal length that might be slightly out. You'll also notice that my camera is covered here by a DIY solar filter. I'll explain how to make these at the end. But again, this is needed so that we can safely focus on the sun during the partial phase of the eclipse because you wanna be focused before totality so that when you take this off when totality starts the camera can just snap away and you can focus on viewing totality with your eyes. So the good news for focusing is that the sun is active right now. So it's actually more likely to have sunspots and sunspots are very easy to focus on because they're high contrast. You just zoom in on your camera screen or if you have an electronic viewfinder that's even easier. And you just try to get that feature in as high contrast as you can focusing. This is something that of course you can practice ahead of time. Another thing that you can do only during the eclipse if there are no sunspots is once the moon starts eclipsing the sun you can actually focus on the lunar limb because it's rocky with craters. So that's a pretty nice way to focus as well. If you're on a fixed tripod like this you're gonna have to be manually tracking the sun it'll move across your screen. You'll wanna note what direction it's moving across the screen and how fast. So for instance if I position the sun in this corner and then let it drift across I can see oh it drifts from the corner to the center of the screen in about three minutes. That way you know about two minutes before totality starts I can position the sun in that corner take off the filter and then once totality is going and it's snapping away you're gonna get a nice centered shot of the corona. I would suggest a telephoto lens like this this is just a cheap 75 to 300 millimeter zoom lens it'll work just fine. For this style of photography this kind of style of kit I wouldn't suggest going to extreme focal lengths on full frame 300 millimeters is sort of the max that I would suggest but really somewhere between 100 to 200 millimeters on full frame might be even better so you don't have to worry about constantly moving it as much. And even at 100 to 200 millimeter focal length you're gonna get plenty of detail for a solar eclipse. So don't worry about that aspect and you'll actually be able to get the full extent of the corona. Okay this leads me into kit number two where the only thing that really changes is we add the star tracker but that also means if you want to you can go to a higher focal length because you're now gonna be tracking the sun and not having to worry about manually tracking it. I shot the 2017 eclipse at 500 millimeter focal length with a full frame camera. I thought that was a really nice focal length to use I could get most but not quite all of the extended corona but then I also got plenty of detail for the prominences, the Baileys beads and all of those kinds of things. Here's the middle corona at one 100th of a second ISO 100 f 5.4 and if we zoom in we can see there's nice detail on the prominences but you also get the full sort of picture for the corona. But like I said for the outer corona it actually keeps extending beyond the frame a little bit here but I like this balance. So I think for full frame tracked I would stick it around 500 millimeters with a crop sensor you can do the math but it's somewhere around 350 to 400 millimeters and micro four thirds. Again you can just use the crop factor to figure out sort of the ideal there. This is also just my opinion so look around because people shoot the eclipse at all kinds of different focal lengths but I think around 500 millimeter focal length on full frame is a really nice one to use. With a tracker one of the big questions if you are used to nighttime astrophotography is how do you pull or align this thing during the day? And I'm probably gonna cover this in a lot more depth in a future video but I'll share the way that I did it in 2017. I got to the site very early. I set up the mount like this and used a compass to just point the mount roughly north. I then went through my other preparations. I found the sun just using my cheap solar finder here and set the mount to solar tracking. And then I just waited and let the sun drift on the screen and then just carefully adjusted polar alignment and tried to slow down the drift or if it started getting worse then I knew I had to go in the opposite direction. And I just played around with that for about a half an hour until the sun was barely drifting. It was mostly staying centered and I only really had to re-center it about once an hour. I did my final re-centering about 10 minutes before totality and that worked out great for me. So it was a pretty easy way to do polar alignment. It wasn't perfect but it was definitely good enough for 500 millimeter focal length. If you are able to set up your gear the night before, you could always do an actual polar alignment with Polaris. That would be the best way. But there are many different ways to actually do daytime polar alignment. So I'm probably gonna review them and share them with some of you in a future video. Okay, and then this is kit number three. You replace the Star Tracker with an equatorial mount. You maybe are using a telescope. The camera is the same. It can be DSLR mirrorless but you're now tethering it to a laptop with special Eclipse software. And this allows you to automate much more of the process because the Eclipse software knows down to the second when the different events of the Eclipse happen and then sends your camera the appropriate command to capture the different events of the Eclipse including the Bailey's Beads for instance. They need a very short shutter speed like 1, 8,000ths of a second if you're at ISO 100. Well, the Corona as we've discussed needs a longer shutter speed like 1, 100th of a second in ISO 100 and F5. So the downside to all of this automation and gear is cost of course, if you don't already own all this stuff weight, this stuff is not super portable. Like you couldn't bring this all in an airplane and then power, the mount needs power. It's a good idea for the laptop to have some kind of backup batteries. So you'll need to bring maybe one big battery or several smaller batteries. The upside is if you really want total coverage of the total solar eclipse meaning all of the phases of the event and you want to enjoy the event visually then I think this is the only way to go. You'll need automation for the camera and you'll need a tracking mount. I'll be reviewing different automation options on the laptop in a future video and including how to use some of these software. This video is brought to you by Squarespace. After capturing all these beautiful photos of the total solar eclipse, what should you do with them? Well, if you want real control over your portfolio and how it's presented, I highly suggest setting up a website with your own domain on Squarespace. I've done just that for my personal portfolio here and it's super easy to add new photos thanks to their drag and drop engine. I also have complete control over the presentation of the website and the photos. I know they're gonna look good on any device thanks to the template which has a fluid design for different screen sizes including of course mobile phones. And I also like how all features in Squarespace are included. So if you wanna add commerce features like an online store that's all built in and included in the price. So if you're looking for a personal website or a professional portfolio or maybe a site for your small business, I think you're gonna really love Squarespace. You can get a free trial today at Squarespace.com and when you're ready to launch use Squarespace.com slash Nebula Photos for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Okay, now let's turn to making custom filters with Potter Astrosolar Film. You're gonna need your camera lens or telescope and you'll need something to measure it with. That could be a tape measure like I'm using or a ruler. You'll also need the Potter Astrosolar Film. You'll need some black construction paper. You'll need something to mark that construction paper with. I'm using a green colored pencil. You'll need some rubber cement. You'll need some black electrical tape. You'll need scissors. And this last tool is optional. This is a rotary cutter. It does come in really handy, but it's not completely necessary. It's for just cutting out the filter cell out of the black construction paper. Okay, the first step is measuring the lens or telescope. We need three measurements. We need an inner diameter. This is how much should be covered by the Astrosolar Film. In my case, that is about 56 millimeters. So I'm just gonna write that down. We need an outer diameter. And I would then add about 15 to 20 millimeters to your outer diameter measurement because you wanna be able to grasp the filter easily and you want enough of sort of a collar there. So I'm gonna use an outer diameter of 90 millimeters for this lens, even though the measured outer diameter is more like 70 millimeters. So I'm adding 20 millimeters to that measurement. And then this last one is how thick the collar should be. And with this lens, you'd wanna keep in mind that you're probably gonna be zoomed out when actually shooting the total solar eclipse. So the lens collar can be a little bit thicker than it would be if the lens was all the way collapsed, right? So just keep these things in mind. It's always better to have a slightly thicker collar so that the filter really stays on the lens or telescope securely. Okay, next grab two pieces of the black construction paper and just tape those down to your work surface. I'm just using a cutting mat here, but you could use cardboard or whatever you have. And the reason we're using two pieces of paper is because we're gonna sandwich the solar film in between two rings of construction paper. So we want to make a few measure or we wanna mark a few of the measurements that we made, you know, the outer diameter, the inner diameter, and we're gonna mark those right on the construction paper with a colored pencil. And to mark these correctly, we also want to mark a center, right? So since the inner diameter of my lens is 56 millimeters, I'm gonna have that and do two marks, you know, 28 millimeters each on either side of the center line, if you see what I mean. So because 28 times two is 56. And then for the outer diameter, remember we ended up at 90 millimeters. So I'm gonna mark out 45 millimeters out from that center line for the outer diameter. Now your specific measurements, of course, are gonna be different, but I'm just sort of giving the process here. If you have any questions, you can always, you know, ask me in the comments. Okay, the next thing you would do if you didn't have a rotary cutter is just use like a simple protractor to draw out a circle or something like that. Or there's other ways, just look up how to draw out a perfect circle. Since I have this rotary cutter, I can just put the point in the middle here and then push down and cut out a perfect circle out of the paper with the cutter. And I'm gonna first cut out the inner circle and then cut out the outer circle. And then what you should be left with is two rings of black construction paper. We're gonna sandwich our astrosolar film in between those two and glue it all together to make our filter cell. Okay, you don't actually wanna touch the astrosolar film directly if you can avoid it. It would be a good idea to use white cotton gloves. I don't have any, but the good news is it does come protected in between some sheets of tissue paper. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm going to draw out on one of those sheets the diameter that I wanna cut the astrosolar film. And I wanna cut it sort of a little bit bigger than the inner diameter, but not as quite as big as the outer diameter so that it can sandwich between those two construction paper rings and then I can glue it all together. So I'm just gonna mark that on this paper that the solar film came packaged with and then draw out a circle here or sort of a rough circle of where I wanna cut and then go ahead and cut the whole thing but cutting right through all three sheets. So the solar film gets cut but the other sheets get cut as well. Then I can very carefully put some rubber cement on one of the rings, take out the solar film and drop it again very carefully on top of that glue, then put the other ring on top of that and I've now made this little sandwich and I'm gonna go ahead and press the edge to get the glue to adhere and I'll set that aside for the moment. Next what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make a collar for the filter. So the way I'm gonna make this collar is I'm going to basically just use two strips of the construction paper, my leftover from where I cut out the rings and I'm gonna make this about, in my case, 30 millimeters or three centimeters deep and I'll sort of practice as I'm making it to make sure that it's the right fit on the lens. So basically I'm just using some a peaceful electrical tape and just trying out different fits until it fits securely onto the lens but it's also easy to take off. So that's sort of the fit I'm going for and that's why I really like these custom filters because you get a really nice, light tight filter. You know, that works very well but is also the easiest kind of filter to take off which is very important for a total solar eclipse. Once I'm sure that it's the right fit I can go ahead and glue that ring together and I'm also gonna tape the tape on the outside with electrical tape. Then I'm gonna very carefully apply some more rubber cement to the filter cell and attach the collar to that. Let that dry. And now, because a lot of the pieces are just sort of roughly glued together what I do is I cover all the different seams with black electrical tape and I've made a lot of filters this way. I know they look a little bit janky but they hold up. I've had white light solar filters for different camera lenses and telescopes that I've had for years now and they're still working just as good as they did the first day I made them. So even though, yeah, this looks a little bit odd I find that the tape helps keep it all secure and I can really be sure that it's not gonna fall apart on me. There's other ways of course to make custom white light solar filters but this is just a pretty inexpensive and easy way that doesn't require much in the way of tools. So when you're all done it will look like this. You just wanna push it all the way onto the lens so it's flat and you can go ahead and test it indoors on a bright bulb. You'll be able to maybe see a little bit of a bright incandescent bulb through the filter but what you're looking for when you're testing it is just make sure there's no tears or pinpricks or anything like that. There shouldn't be but it's a good idea to test just before you bring it out and do the real thing under the sun. I've never had an issue with a botter astro solar film so hopefully you don't either and if you have any questions about making these filters again feel free to get in touch with me or comment on this video. 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 both the annual eclipse in October and 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 in both months leading up to the next two eclipses. And the instructions to get that set up are already posted on my Patreon page. There's gonna 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 onto 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 till next time, this has been Nico Carver, Clear Skies.