Once every twenty five years or so we get to see an eclipse over our part of the world, North Wales.
So I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to make the most of the March 2015 event, and booked the day off work in anticipation of a hard morning's work shooting video and stills right through the two hours that the eclipse would last for.
Heading to the coast at Rhos-on-Sea, I set up both my Canon 5D and 6D cameras on tripods in order to shoot stills for a time lapse video I was planning to make.
My 6D was fitted with the heavyweight 100-400mm zoom, with sun filter fitted, to get shots of the actual sun itself, while my 5D was employed taking wide angle views over Colwyn Bay as the sky grew darker.
Everything was going great until about two thirds of the way throught the eclipse, as the sun was being slowly uncovered again as the moon moved away.
It was at this point that the clouds started to move in in earnest.
There had been sporadic cloud cover before, but this looked more serious, and the sun was soon sufficiently covered with moving clouds as to render my sun filter obsolete.
Once the extremely dark filter was removed, and looking at the live view image on the back of my camera I was entranced by the play of light and shadow across the sun's face, so I switched from shooting stills to shooting video instead, hoping to catch some of the drama unfolding above me.
The result is this video.
Originally two minutes long, the clip is shown at 4x normal speed which hastens the movement of the clouds and sun to make the viewing a bit more lively.
Filename - solar eclipse 01 720p.mp4
Camera - Canon EOS 6D
Lens 100-400mm zoom @ 400mm
Exposure - 1/60 sec @ f16, ISO100
Video capture - 720p @ 50fps
Location - Rhos-on-Sea, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p
Clip duration - 31 seconds at 25 frames per second.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.