Eclipse based musings
Yes you can take a photo of the eclipse during totality, Unfortunately it will be terrible without an optical zoom. It will look like every time you attempt to photograph the moon. If you want a photo that commemorates the eclipse, plan on shooting from the ground and getting your friends and the eclipse in it. Selfie stick may be required.
You’ll have about two minutes to down your Moon Pies, Sundrop, and finish playing Total Eclipse of the Heart. Make sure you’ve got the song on your phone because you can expect to have no cell coverage due to everyone and their dog in the nearby area being on their phone livestreaming the eclipse to Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Temperatures will be dropping by as much as 10f degrees in the course of it. If you’re wanting to submit your temperature data to NASA they ask that you have geotagging enabled on your photos and take a picture of an outdoor thermometer. At least that’s what I heard on NPR.
Don’t look at the eclipse without glasses. When it’s totally eclipsed it may be safe, but don’t be the poster child for the next eclipse’s eyesight warning campaign.
When the net starts to break from all the pictures of the dark syncing up to dropbox, google drive, facebook, etc, you’ll still have bars and signal. Resist the urge to smack anyone saying “this is odd, I’ve got five bars but I can’t post the pictures of darkness I just took”.
Do not make any deals involving exotic plants.
If your picture of the moon shows haze around it that’s not visible to the naked eye, clean your camera lens quickly.
Stop using the phrase “umbraphile” within two weeks of the eclipse because it just makes you sound weird or puts you in with those Babylon 5 lovers.
When you are 5 bars and no significant data speed you’ll expend phone battery at a much higher rate because you’re maintaining a connection and trying to push data down it. Expect your phone to drain a lot faster. You can turn data off to mitigate the losses.
Several hours before the eclipse check weather.com radar and futurecast and make sure that a cloud is not expected to be over you. You may have time to move to a non-cloudy area. You’ll need to figure it out.
If someone is complaining of a headache or acting woozy following the eclipse get them some water. This is generally caused by people getting hot, dehydrated, excited, sweaty, and cold all within a short time and has really nothing to do with the eclipse. You can blame demons however. Stress.
If you’re attempting to video a banding effect, good luck. White surface, high FPS, don’t move the phone around because shadow banding and movement = refocus which defeats the purpose of attempting to video it.
If a man screams “save the cheerleader, save the world” ask why didn’t he simply bring back a piece of paper laying out how to solve the issue.
Above all, remember several million people are going to be filming this, so snap a pic of your friends and family and enjoy that two minute totality. Live that moment. Use eye protection though, seriously. Don’t be that guy.
