Photos can preserve the moment, but only if they turn out.

Experienced eclipse photographers say that high-end specialty equipment isn’t necessary to get solid photos. It’s a boon for dedicated solar- and astrophotographers who have a masterful command of motorized star-tracking camera mounts and automatic exposure bracketing functions on digital cameras. 

But for most people, trying to wrangle complex equipment during the few precious minutes of totality — the last in the U.S. for the next 20 years — risks missing photos and the eclipse itself. All you really need is a digital camera with a fairly long lens and a tripod. A certified solar filter (like viewing glasses for your camera) is necessary except during totality, when the glasses and filter come off. 

“Know exactly what you need to do and not panic,” said professional photographer Tristan Savatier. “Be cool.” 

Savatier traveled to Indonesia to photograph a total solar eclipse in 2016, and he shot the 2017 total eclipse across the U.S. in Oregon. On Thursday he was traveling to southern Texas to photograph this eclipse. 

In Indonesia, he said, he had about two minutes of totality, or full solar eclipse, to take photos of the sun’s corona: whips of plasma flaring out from the sun that are only visible when the moon fully blocks the star. Savatier was armed with his standard Sony digital camera body equipped with a 200mm telephoto lens. He used a remote shutter control so he didn’t bump the camera by pushing the shutter button on the camera body. The two- or three-second self-timer function on many cameras works well for those who don’t have a remote controller, he said. 

“I did the thing completely manually,” he said. “The hard part is having a good focus because autofocus will not focus” on the darkened sun for many cameras.

Another photographer nearby traveled to Indonesia with ultra-expensive specialized equipment that included a star tracker and an automatic shutter trigger, Savatier said, and spent hours setting it all up. 

Savatier ended up with a handful of good photos, adjusting his settings manually between each shot and firing the shutter himself, as he would in almost any other photography situation. 

“The guy with all his equipment set up,” he recounted, “he looked at me and said it didn’t trigger.”

Savatier mounts his camera to a tripod without a motorized star-tracker — a sometimes finicky device that, if precisely adjusted into exact position, can pan a camera with the sun through the sky as the earth spins. But with his camera stationary on a tripod, he said, he had to continually readjust the camera position to keep the sun centered in the frame. 

Using a 300mm lens is good for a stationary camera that’s being adjusted by hand, he said, because it provides more room around the sun in the image. 

During totality, the brightness of the sun’s corona varies, with the brightest part nearest the sun and getting dimmer farther from the sun. Savatier recommended shooting with an aperture of f/4–f/5.6; ISO 100; and a variety of shutter speeds to capture various parts of the corona.

A shutter speed, or exposure time, of 1/200 second can capture detail in the brightest part of the corona near the sun, but the outer parts will be too dark to see. Taking more photos at gradually longer exposure times down to 1 or 2 seconds will produce a series of images where different parts of the corona are visible. 

After the 2016 eclipse, Savatier used photoshop to stack four choice images of various exposure times on top of each other in perfect alignment. Then he used Photomatix software to blend the photos into a single composite image where all of the corona, and even some detail on the moon surface, was visible. The program’s “tone mapping” function made the image look realistic to what eclipse viewers saw with their eyes. 

But, he noted, some of his individual images were good in their own right, even though not all of the corona was visible at once. And, he stressed, “The camera I use doesn’t matter.” What matters, he said, was having the know-how and practice to make things work in the brief moment of totality. 

And it might not even be a good idea for someone to photograph the eclipse if it’s their first time seeing one, he said. It could be better just to enjoy the otherworldly sight. The 2016 eclipse in Indonesia, Savatier said, was not his first — it was just the first one he photographed. 

Most people, he said, “get paralyzed staring at the eclipse. It’s incredible and it’s very difficult to keep your mind (clear).

“The first time I saw an eclipse I didn’t take a photo, honestly. After you’ve seen one, the second one and the third one I was able to take photos.”