Discussion12 August eclipse in Spain: who is going and what are you bringing?

Vale, it is six weeks to go so I think we need a thread. For anyone who doesn't know, on 12 August there is a total solar eclipse and the path goes across the north of Spain in the evening, totality around half past eight local time with the sun quite low in the west. From Valencia it is very close to the edge, so I am going with my brother to a village in Teruel to have a bit more time in totality, less than two minutes anyway.

I have the X-S20 with the 70-300, so with the crop it is like 450mm, and I bought a white light solar filter for the front. My plan is filter ON for the partial, filter OFF only for totality, bracket for the corona, and then a wide shot of the landscape on the phone. Is this crazy? Who else is going, and where? Hotels in the path are completely full, my cousin says even campsites near Burgos were booked since last year.

Not going (Colorado, and I did April 2024 from Texas), but a few numbers from that experience. Your 450mm-equivalent framing is about right. The corona extends a couple of solar diameters and you'll want some room around it.

For bracketing at f/8 and ISO 100 I went from roughly 1/4000 down to about 1/4 in full-stop steps, which covered prominences through to the outer corona. I'd shoot that early in totality, then stop and look. Practise taking the filter off by feel beforehand, because you won't want to be fumbling.

The big difference for you is sun altitude. With the sun that low, you're looking through a lot more atmosphere, which will dim it and can soften the corona if there's any haze, so I wouldn't trust an exposure table blindly. Shoot the sun with the filter on at the same time of evening a few days before and see what the meter does. And please, a proper certified solar filter for the partial phases, not stacked ND filters.

rjhowell said:

Shoot the sun with the filter on at the same time of evening a few days before

This is a very good idea, I didn't think about the low sun making it darker. Thank you!

Marta_G said:

Who else is going, and where?

I'm going! Flights were already silly money by March so we're flying into Bilbao and driving down towards Burgos. Bringing the A7R V, the 24-70 for a wide landscape thing with the eclipse in it, and the 70-180 I definitely didnt need. Honestly I'm going to watch most of it with my eyes. Everyone I know who saw 2024 says don't spend the whole thing staring at a screen

Saw April 2024 from a ranch outside Kerrville, Texas. Clouds rolled in about twenty minutes before and parted maybe ninety seconds before second contact. I have never heard a crowd of strangers make a noise like that, before or since.

The light is the thing nobody prepares you for. It doesn't get dark like evening, it goes a strange flat steely colour, the shadows get sharp edges, the birds go quiet and the temperature drops enough that folks were reaching for jackets in Texas in April. Then the last bead of sun goes and there it is. I'd seen a hundred photos of the corona and none of them looked like that.

Marta, my one piece of advice: set it all up, put the bracketing on an intervalometer or a script if your camera will do it, and then LOOK UP. The photos I got were fine. The memory is better than any of them. And bring a chair, because you'll be standing around in the heat a long time beforehand...

• Walt

Going! My partner and I booked a tiny place near Oviedo back in January before it all sold out. Fully expecting the Asturian weather to behave exactly like Scottish weather, so there's a backup plan to drive inland if it's grey. OM-1 II and the 12-40 for wide, plus a borrowed 100-400 for the sun itself. Proper excited.

Marta_G said:

Who else is going, and where?

Not going, family holiday in Croatia that week, which my wife booked in January and she does not care about eclipse. There we get a partial only. I will shoot it from the beach with a filter if I can escape for twenty minutes.

Dreich said:

there's a backup plan to drive inland if it's grey

Good plan, in the north the coast can have clouds when inland is clear. Teruel normally in August is very dry, my worry is more the traffic after, everybody will drive home at the same time at night

Not going, but if anyone wants to know what an eclipse looks like through Leeds cloud I'll report back. Partial only here and it's practically sunset anyway. Bought some eclipse glasses off the internet for a quid each and the box says 'certified' in three different fonts, so that's reassuring

rjhowell said:

The big difference for you is sun altitude.

In Kraków only partial, and sun is low. Is it true that in Spain it is very low, near horizon in the east part? Then a hill or building can block everything. In mountains here we have this problem with sunset all the time, you plan the photo, and the sun goes behind the ridge 20 minutes before the time the app says.

TomekKRK said:

Then a hill or building can block everything.

Yes!! This is the main problem, in the east the sun is very low, so I checked the place in Teruel with an app for the horizon, there is a flat field looking west. My brother thinks I am obsessed. He is right

Ok, I am back and I still have goosebumps. We had clear sky in Teruel, a bit of haze near the horizon only. The partial with the filter went fine, then the diamond ring, and I forgot the camera for maybe twenty seconds because I was just shouting with my brother and some people from the village who came to the same field with chairs and a cooler of beer.

Then I did the bracket and most of them are ok. The corona is softer than in the 2024 photos I think, because of the haze, but you can see two pink prominences on the edge and I am very happy. And the light on the field, everything was a strange silver-orange colour, no photo shows this properly. I hardly slept.

Thank you all for the advice, especially the test a few days before, because the exposure for the partial was much darker than I expected because of the low sun, exactly like rjhowell said. Next one is 2027 in the south, my brother already said no

Marta_G said:

I forgot the camera for maybe twenty seconds

Same, honestly. We were in a field off a back road north of Burgos with about two hundred other people, half of them British for some reason lol. A bit of cloud floating about all evening that cleared with ten minutes to spare and the whole field cheered at the cloud, which was a first.

Got one wide frame on the 24-70 with the shadow coming across the fields and the sky going dark blue over the hills that I'm properly proud of, and about forty frames on the 70-180 that I haven't dared look at yet because I just held the shutter down and stared at the sky like Walt said. Then sat in traffic on the way back to Bilbao until 2am, then a service station churro at 3am, which was its own kind of totality.

Worth every minute honestly. Every single penny of the stupid flights. Already looking at where the next one is

Asturias did Asturias things... cloud on the coast all afternoon, so we bailed and drove inland at four, found a gap in the hills and got about a minute of clear sky either side of totality. Proper emotional. The photos are a bit rubbish and I genuinely don't care.

Marta_G said:

you can see two pink prominences on the edge

Congratulations, all of you. Marta, a softer corona through haze is exactly what I'd expect at that altitude, and getting prominences with the sun under ten degrees up is a genuinely good result. Glad the test frames helped.

Leeds report as promised: cloud. Saw nothing. Took a lovely photo of a grey sky though.