Many people have become tired of hearing about a certain solar eclipse taking place on Monday, and those individuals may have done absolutely nothing to prepare for it. This absolute humbug of a celestial event seems like an overrated excuse to price gouge AirBNB rates and sell dorky cardboard glasses, right?
Procrastinators and those who have had a last-minute change of heart may find themselves at a loss since special items are recommended for viewing and photographing an eclipse. Providing further discouragement is knowing that millions of people will be photographing it, and surely many of those people will have high-end camera equipment and appropriate filters.
Still — if you take a photo or video of the eclipse, it will be yours. Why not create a little memento? People love to take photos of the moon even though high-res images from ultra powerful cameras are available, and there’s something undeniably special about looking at celestial objects through your own telescope even if it doesn’t hold a candle to the James Webb.
It’s a bit late now to purchase a designated solar filter, which is required to let cameras capture zoomed-in details of the sun. Many filters are sold out, expedited shipping is expensive, and even if a friend has a solar filter, the eclipse will pass quickly and there’s hardly time to swap lenses around.
Make a solar filter out of trash
Fear not: there is a solution in an unlikely place.
Yep — it’s in a box of Pop Tarts.
It turns out that the Mylar “foil” wrapping of Pop Tarts, candies, and other foods can be a reasonably effective solar filter for cameras in a pinch, as can pieces of an emergency blanket made from the same material. Crafty photographers have created solar filters for their cameras using Pop Tart and candy wrappers mounted to cardboard tubes, soup cans, or even attached directly to a camera lens using masking tape.
Because the camera will be zoomed in on the sun, only a small piece of Mylar is needed for this filtering method. The Mylar should be placed over the direct center of the lens. Try to select a section of wrapper without words or colors printed on it, and place the wrapper over the camera with the “inside” facing outward. If taping the wrapper directly to the lens, use a gentle tape that will not leave scratches or residue such as masking tape.
Do NOT look directly at the sun through Mylar film. This method is only intended to be used with devices that have a viewing screen such as digital cameras with LED displays. Don’t look at the sun through the eyepiece of a camera with a Pop Tart filter!
The resulting photos will not be as sharp as a proper professional setup, but it should work for taking photos of the eclipse in a pinch. Check out the video below for directions and comparisons between sun photos using different food wrappers and dedicated solar film!
[embedded content]Wide-angle lens phone pictures
Instead of zooming in on the sun using a camera kitted out with a soup can and a Pop Tart wrapper, Apple reports that the wide-angle lenses in iPhones can be used to safely photograph solar eclipses without filters.
The iPhone wide lens technique has a catch. Pictures taken with an unfiltered phone camera should not be zoomed in, so the eclipse will only take up a very small part of the picture. This is great for locales with beautiful scenery, but anyone stepping out of work for a minute to grab a picture might have a less-than-ideal view.
Again, these pictures should be taken without looking directly at the sun.
Take pictures of the sun without taking pictures of the sun
A man demonstrates the colander method of viewing a solar eclipse. Light projected through the holes in the colander creates hundreds of small crescents on the paper below.
For those unwilling to entrust the well-being of their cameras to random garbage or the word of Apple executives, another fun way to view and photograph a solar eclipse involves taking pictures of light and shadows.
One of the coolest, easiest, and most well-known ways to indirectly photograph eclipses is the colander/cheese grater method. Most objects with small holes will work well, including punched cardboard or paper. These simple items project crescent-shaped lights during an eclipse. Smaller holes will create sharper images.
Continuing the theme of repurposed kitchen garbage, NASA has shared instructions for making an eclipse viewer from a cereal box.
[embedded content]For the clearest and sharpest results, project the light onto a smooth white sheet of paper. Colanders are generally preferred for this method because their holes’ arrangements create interesting patterns of hundreds of little crescents.
Projections can be personalized by punching holes in card stock to form a desired shape, spelling out a name or forming a picture. For an even more creative approach, crescents may be projected onto various different surfaces like leaves, drawings, or someone’s hand.
A USDA employee took this photo of crescents spelling “USDA” on a leaf during the August 2017 solar eclipse.
No matter how overhyped it might seem, remember that this solar eclipse is more than a tourist trap — it’s a fantastic part of the elaborate dance between stars, planets, and moons in our solar system. Happy photographing!
