Eclipse Photography

This page has a summary of the equipment and techniques that we have found to be helpful for solar eclipse photography.

The key to success for an eclipse is to practice, practice, practice. Make sure all the choices you've made work for you.

Equipment

Our equatorial tracking mount is the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer 2i Pro Pack. It can be used with their counterweighted mount or with a ball or geared head.

A leveling base is a very quick and convenient way to level a tripod; much faster than adjusting leg lengths! We use the Neewer LP64 Tripod Head Leveling Base.

A panning base provides a way to aim the equatorial mount after placing the tripod legs as desired. It's also very handy for making adjustments to azimuth to correct polar alignment. We use the FEISOL Panning Base PB-70.

A digital angle gauge can be used to set the altitude angle for accurate polar alignment. We use the Klein Tools 935DAG Digital Angle Gauge and Level.

We use a geared head to mount the camera to the Star Adventurer. A ball head would also work, but the geared head is much nicer for making adjustments. We like the Sunwayfoto geared heads for their compact size.

A solar filter is required for the parial phases. We like the Thousand Oaks Optical Full Aperture (Solarlite Thin Film Polymer) filters. They slide on and off the lens quickly, but have customizable felt that can be adjusted for a snug fit that keeps the filter from falling off.

A trio of bubble levels (aka "spirit levels") works nicely when adjusting the leveling base. Ours are 10mm x 10mm x 29mm. Note that they are of varying quality, and each of the four sides may register differently. We used a reliable level to create a level surface, then placed each bubble level on each of its four sides to find the side that worked best, and marked it. We found that most of the inexpensive levels had one side that was good.

We cut a mylar blanket to create sun shields for camera, mount, and computer.

A laptop stand can help with airflow to keep the computer cool.

Resources

Eclipsophile, Jay Anderson's site for climate and weather.

Interactive eclipse map from Xavier Jubier.

Interactive eclipse map from Besselian Elements Team.

Shutter Speed calculator on Xavier's site. Note that the EV calculation is accurate only when ISO is 100.