The Solar Eclipse did not bless my region with the full Monty, with the moon only managing to take a small bite of the sun. That, though, was enough for me. As soon as I donned my protective glasses and saw the celestial show, I had to document it in pictures.
Cue the struggle montage.
As I learned in previous solar eclipse events and, honestly, through years of photography, you can not shoot the sun or an event like a full or even partial solar eclipse with just your camera or smartphone. I don’t care about how many megapixels you have or the size of your lens. In fact, shooting without lens protection could destroy the sensor on your digital camera or smartphone.
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For this task, I pulled out a couple of tripods and grabbed both the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. I also grabbed two pairs of protective Eclipse sunglasses I’d held onto since the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017.
Setting uop for the big eclipse show
First, I placed the phones in their respective tripods and smartphone holders. After aiming the cameras at the sun and figuring out which of the three lenses on each phone were the telephoto lenses, I took the eclipse sunglasses and positioned the filters over each telephoto lens.
On the iPhone 17 Pro Max, I immediately struggled to get the phone’s camera system to stick with the right lens. I would uncover the lens array to find the sun and then flip the filter back on, which is so dark that the sun, when I could find it, would become an orange blur. Even when I held my finger on the screen to lock the exposure, as soon as I moved or made any kind of adjustment, I’d lose the lock. And, honestly, it was never in focus.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the telephoto camera to match the necessary zoom, exposure, and focus. In fact, I soon realized that without a way to manually control the focus, this would never work.
Meanwhile, on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, I had more luck getting the right focus and exposure, especially once I switched to Pro mode (under More in the camera app), but the images didn’t really come together until I zoomed past optical and into digital zoom. The photos look good, but I’m not sure I can trust them as representing reality.
I switched back to the iPhone 17 Pro Max Eclipse photo project.
For full control of the iPhone camera system, I downloaded the Halide app. It surfaces controls for everything from ISO to white balance and, more importantly, exposure and focus. Even better, Halide settings remain until you change them, just like a pro-level camera. Once I found the right combination of exposure, ISO, zoom (8x sensor crop), and focus, I just kept shooting.
In my haste, I neglected to switch to Apple’s RAW shooting mode, and the filter slipped a bit, so it wasn’t perfectly flat or positioned against the lens, which may account for the purplish hue of my photos and the slightly 3D effect. Even so, I like the results.
Obviously, these are still smartphone photos and don’t compare to what I could capture with my Sony A6000 and the right filter, but they are pretty cool nonetheless.
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