Since the big event was due, I've left work early. First, I needed to find some filters to use. I remember there were some large appropriate filters from the stash of my late grandfather, but I looked everywhere and did not find them.
I wanted to ask my parents, but apparently the cellphones are too bulky and heavy to carry while doing work in the garden, so my several calls over the course of an hour went to voice mail. Eventually I took the regular filters I once bought for GoPro - better have something than nothing, maybe if I stack them together...
My brother didn't have the filters either, so we were unprepared. Fortunately once we reached the garden, my father found us a stash of various pieces of dark glass. We took them all and drove, as the event already started. There is a hill overlooking the whole village - while not very high, it at least let you see to the West over the tree line of the surrounding forest. Originally I planned to walk up there, the daily step threshold won't reach itself, but it was too late for that. Normally it is rare to see any other person on that hill, however that time the roads on top were packed with cars, motors and people.
None of the filters I took were even remotely adequate, not even when all stacked together. Most of the glass pieces were too transparent as well. At one point during testing my phone got stuck in high ISO mode so everything was overexposed.
Great, now my phone does not work...
Thankfully after switching between different lenses and camera modes, it finally returned to normal. In the end we've found three pieces that were ok. One was a greenish-blue mirror, one dark red and one turned out to be the glass from welding mask. Only the latter was the proper filter/protection on its own, so it was mainly used by my brother with his Nikon, but other two somewhat worked when used together, however depending on the direction of the stacking the effects included strange lens flares and/or reflections.
The phone refused to be consistent with auto settings - at some point it even bumped the ISO and increased exposure time as for night shots, even though all I was doing was switching between the green and red stacked and the welder glass filter. But at least there is some variety to the photos :o)
As the eclipse was progressing, so was the sunset. The Moon started from covering lower right side of the Sun. When it moved to the center low, the Sun was almost below horizon. Ultimately I could do the last shots without any filters.
Some people had a bit better position for observation :o)
I'm glad I could experience the eclipse, and the weather could not have been better. At least once that part didn't ruin anything.
