Eclipse 2024 - What I used For Taking Some 'Budget' Photos

I was quite fortunate to be living within the band of totality for this year's solar eclipse, and was able to view it with family in a nearby municipal park. Since this is basically a "once in a lifetime" event, I wanted to grab some pictures to immortalize the experience. Some research online revealed that one would need a telephoto lens no shorter than 800-1000mm to ensure the solar disc occupies a decent percentage of the frame. That said, I did not have thousands of dollars (literally) for a Nikon brand long telephoto lens to fit my aging Nikon D5000 DSLR camera. After looking around online for cheaper options, I bought a Jintu 420-800mm telephoto lens for around $100 off Amazon three weeks ago. This lens comes with a 2X teleconverter, giving it a range from 840mm to 1600mm. I also purchased a 67mm solar filter to use with it. The filter is a "Celestial Optical ND1000000", purchased on Amazon. In my opinion the quality of this filter is excellent. It is made of optical glass with a special coating to give it the density needed for safely imaging the sun. Other cheaper filters use a film membrane that is easily damaged and that can also introduce distortion in the image.
Celestron makes a large film type filter - similar to what is used in the "eclipse glasses" - for placement over the end of a telescope or spotting scope. It is rated ISO safe for solar viewing; I purchased one of these on Amazon for $19 at the same time I purchased the Jintu lens and camera filter. The Celestron deal was excellent both for viewing the eclipse by looking through it, and also allowed me to take a couple usable shots with my phone. Just before totality, something went wrong with my Nikon and I was unable to get a quality picture of the fiery red "beads" forming a ring around the eclipse.

With no further adieu, below are the photos. Note the sunspot visible in the middle photo.

Pictures with the Nikon D5000 and Jintu lens:

Pictures with the phone - these were done with a Samsung S22 phone and the Celestron fliter mentioned above:

The cell phone photos, to my great surprise and all things considered, were not too bad. The phone camera features a 30X digital zoom that actually creates a reasonable size image of the sun in the frame. The Celestron filter imparted a sort of sepia tone to the solar disc when I looked through it. As one can see from the phone pictures, the phone's imager obviously distorted the color. My biggest complaint about the phone is the imager still washed out enough during totality that I was unable to capture the red glowing 'beads' that I could plainly see around the solar disc with the unaided eye. [ONLY during the brief totality, one can view this safely WITHOUT eye protection]

Jintu 420-800mm F8.3 lens - some thoughts At 420mm and without the teleconverter, the image quality is pretty reasonable - good enough for a hobby lens. One could certainly take pretty decent wildlife photos if plenty of light is present. At the 800mm full extension, the F8.3 aperature really starts to darken the image, making focusing more difficult. With the teleconverter, the image darkens more, and the limitations in the lens itself become more apparent. In the pictures of the thinner crescents of the sun, parts of the image are in focus and parts are clearly out of focus. I probably would have been better off not using the teleconverter and going with 800mm at full extension, rather than the 1000mm and 1200mm I was trying to use.
With any long telephoto, stability of your camera mount is critical. Very slight movements can totally blur out the subject, or even cause it to fall out of the frame! I used a professional quality tripod that was given to me some years ago. All in all this worked pretty well, but if I were to get seriously into astrophotography, I would use a different type of tripod and camera mount that would facilitate more precision movement and aiming of the camera.
All in all, I'm disappointed at the photos I took with the DSLR. The DSLR takes excellent pictures with its standard lens, but I think I tried to exact more performance from the Jintu than it was capable of producing. It was used to take some photos found elsewhere on this blog. Rather than the magazine quality pictures I was hoping to get, what I ended up with are basically just souveniers of the event. Same could be said of the cell phone pictures, but I certainly wasn't expecting professional results from the phone.

Brief personal notes: From mid 2020 to early 2023, I had significant health problems. Amazingly, I avoided catching CoVID until this past December 2023 when a family member brought it home and exposed me. Between working during all this and trying to regain my health, and dealing with family issues, I have done little in the way of lab activities since mid 2020. The eclipse photography is the first "lab" type activity I have done in quote a while.
On a happier note I have managed to do a bit of camping in my RV over the past several Summers. Prior readers of this blog will remember the July 2018 post I did regarding the 'retro' RV camper.