Taking photos of a solar eclipse could be very harmful to your eyes and also to the equipment you use. Here is a set of instructions that you must strictly follow in order to safely take photos of a solar eclipse:

1) Set up your equipment ahead of time. If you have a tripod, this is the time to get it out, as it will prevent you from looking directly at the sun and will also allow you to take long exposure photos.

2) Get a good sunscreen that can be placed in front of your lens. Do not shoot without a filter as it may seriously damage your eyes or the camera sensor.

3) If you have a DSLR or interchangeable lens camera, put on the lens with the longest focal length. A focal length of 200mm to 5oomm should give you a really good image that captures the intricate details of the sun. If you are using a compact camera, set it to the maximum optical zoom level that is available.

4) Use an ISO value of 50 or 100, an aperture size of 8-16, and focus at infinity. Take a series of photos at all shutter speeds from 1/1000 sec to 1 sec.

5) If your camera supports bracketing, turn it on. This will tell the camera to automatically take the same shot at 3-5 different exposure levels and you can pick the best of the lot offline. If you don’t have bracketing, manually change the exposure level of your shots so you don’t lose the magic. Low exposure shots will give you the details, high exposure shots will give you better outer coronal features, and you can also combine them later to create an HDR image.

6) Take some long exposure shots to better capture the coronal features.

7) To take group photos during the eclipse, project the eclipse image onto a wall or water using a reflector and shoot against the background.