Professional Solar Eclipse Photography

This is a guide on how to take professional photos of the sun or any eclipse events. The photos are taken from the most recent solar eclipse. However, here in Canada we were not part of the path of totality so these are just partial eclipse pictures.

Credits to my friend Jixiong Deng for all the Photos.

Step 1: Setup Camera

* Setup your Tripod outdoors

* Add a solar filter to the front of your camera zoom lens

It is important to put a filter, without one, you can damage your camera. These filters typically attenuate the sun’s visible and infrared energy by a factor of 100,000.

Step 2: Partial Eclipse Camera Settings

Here we will only use a single exposure.

* Shoot the sun at a fixed aperture anywhere between f/8 and f/16. For the shutter speed use a speed between 1/4000 second to 1/30 second.

* Look at the exposures (from the histogram) and choose the best shutter speed and aperture combination. The graph should be in the upper brightness values.

Step 3: Total Eclipse

Although, we were not on the path of totality, if you are to be at one in the future, follow these steps:

* Remove the solar filter, since you would like to photograph the sun's corona.

* There is no one exposure for all solution, so you have to experiment with the aperture and shutter speeds quickly before the totality is over.

* Choose only one aperture and start changing the shutter speeds between 1/1000 to 1 second. If none works, choose another aperture and repeat!