Eclipse preparation

Assuming it isn't horribly overcast on Friday I'm going to try two photographic techniques for the eclipse. The first, which I've tried before and got reasonable results with, is silvered mylar (from an emergency blanket) stretched over the lens of my Nikon. That cuts out most of the light, but to be on the safe side I shoot as quickly as I can and point the lens away from the sun at all other times.

The other method I'll try is an infra-red filter on my Fuji bridge camera. It turns out that pointing it at the sun lets in enough light for the screen to work, so that I can actually point, spot when the sun is in shot, and take a picture in a couple of seconds, rather than faffing about setting up the camera on a tripod, aiming, shoving the filter in etc. Here's one I took today - this was a very rough attempt with the filter and camera hand-held, and I later discovered some smearing on the filter which probably didn't help. I'm hoping that with the filter properly held on etc. it'll be better. There was very light cloud.

( biggish picture )

This is a completely unmodified photo, apart from conversion to jpg, and I think it's worked reasonably well apart from some flare. Any thoughts?