Photographing the Sun: Let Me Count The Ways

Know how you can start a fire with just a magnifying glass and the sun? And if you stare at the sun, the lens of your eye is the magnifying glass, and the burning happens on your retina? Well, cameras have the same problem. So how do you take a picture of the sun--which you might want to do during, say, a solar eclipse?

Turns out there are as many ways to photograph an eclipse as there are to watch it. With a bit of preparation and the generosity of strangers, I got to experience five of them during Sunday's annular eclipse.

My husband and I drove from the Bay Area up to Mt. Hirz near Lake Shasta which was smack in the middle of the optimal eclipse viewing path. About a mile from the top, we ran into an amateur astronomer named Ben who'd scoped the whole mountain the previous day and decided this was the best spot. He had a telescope, so we stayed with him.

A bit of cloud cover when the eclipse started had us all chewing our fingernails, but then it cleared up--and what a view!

Although I am an admirer of photography, I am not the most skilled practitioner. Flickr, however, is a treasure trove of beautiful images. All the pictures in this post are from photographers kind enough to share their work openly, for the enjoyment of the masses.

To make a hokey pinhole camera like I did, cut a square out of a piece of cardbord, tape aluminum foil over the empty square, and poke a hole in the foil with a pin. Stand with your back to the sun and hold the cardboard so the sun shines directly through the pinhole onto a piece of white paper. (This photographer made three holes, one of which was obviously best.)

A better technique is to replace the pinhole with a pair of binoculars like my husband did. You keep your back to the sun and hold the binoculars in the same position as the pinhole camera and you get a larger, clearer view of the sun on the paper.

Astronomer Ben's wife had a pair of eclipse viewing glasses that were the best way to see color--the "ring of fire" when the moon is totally inside the sun. You can put these glasses--or a really thick filter, which is the same thing (but see comments)--in front of a camera as well as in front of your eyes. But the sun looks really small.

Best of all is an actual telescope. Then you can see sunspots!

The fifth, final, and possibly my favorite way to see/photograph the eclipse requires no equipment at all--just some trees. When the sun is a crescent, it shines through the leaves to create hundreds of little crescents on the ground or wall.

Photographing the sun is one thing. But the full mood of an eclipse, with its cool air and dusky light, is difficult to capture. Here's one picture (not from the path of full annularity) that really pulled it off: