How to Photograph a Solar Eclipse

The last time I stood in a crowd at totality, the happiest people weren’t the ones behind cameras. They were the ones looking up. The stressed ones were hunched over tripods, fighting exposure settings through the two or three minutes they’d traveled a thousand miles to see. That’s the trap this guide exists to avoid: in 2026 you can get a genuinely good eclipse photograph and watch the eclipse with your own eyes — but only if you pick your method and practice it before eclipse day.

This is the photography companion to our guide to watching a solar eclipse safely — the eye-safety rules, the ISO 12312-2 glasses standard, and the viewing gear live there. Here we’re after the picture.

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August 12, 2026 is a European eclipse

Be clear-eyed about the geography before you buy anything. The path of totality on August 12, 2026 crosses Greenland, western Iceland, and a strip of northern Spain — the first total solar eclipse over mainland Europe since 2006. A partial eclipse is visible across the rest of Europe, and a modest partial reaches parts of far northeastern North America, low in the evening sky. For most American readers this is a travel eclipse: you’re either flying to it or photographing a partial phase from home. Our eclipse calendar has every eclipse through 2030 with visibility maps, and the August 2027 eclipse over Spain and Egypt — with up to 6 minutes 23 seconds of totality, nearly triple 2026’s — is the one to start planning now if you miss this one.

One more reason the date matters even from a backyard in Ohio: the same new moon that causes the eclipse gives the Perseid meteor shower a moonless peak that very night. If the eclipse itself is out of reach, the sky still puts on a show worth photographing.

The one rule that outranks every other

A camera pointed at the un-eclipsed or partially eclipsed Sun needs a proper solar filter over the front of the lens — every camera, every telescope, every pair of binoculars, every time any part of the Sun’s bright disk is showing. Concentrated sunlight destroys camera sensors, and an eyepiece or viewfinder without a front filter can destroy a retina faster than you can blink. The only exception is the brief window of totality, when the Moon fully covers the disk: filters come off, the corona comes out, and the instant the first bead of sunlight returns, the filter goes back on. Partial and annular eclipses have no safe unfiltered moment at all — not for eyes, not for sensors.

For your eyes, that means certified ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses; for a camera lens or conventional telescope, a purpose-made solar filter such as a Celestron EclipSmart solar filter sized to your optic. Sunglasses, ND filters, smoked glass, and stacked camera filters all fail this test — they cut visible glare while passing the infrared that does the damage. The full safety rundown, including how to vet a filter’s certification, is in the watching guide.

The smart-telescope route — the one I’d take

Eclipse photography used to demand a tracking mount, a long lens, a solar filter you rigged yourself, and a practiced routine for swapping settings mid-event. A smart telescope collapses all of that into one box. The ZWO Seestar S30 Pro ($699) is the unit I’d bring: it ships with a magnetic snap-on solar filter in the box, its Solar System mode finds and tracks the Sun on its own, and its dual-lens 4K camera handles both the close-up of the shrinking crescent and a wide view of the scene. At 1.65 kg with a tabletop tripod included, it fits in a carry-on — which matters for an eclipse you’re flying to. It’s our “best step up” pick in the smart telescope guide, and this is the use case where it earns the title.

The honest budget version of the same advice: the $399 Seestar S30 photographs the Sun the same way — same snap-on solar filter in the box, same automatic solar tracking, a single lens instead of two. It’s the top beginner pick in that same guide, and for a partial eclipse from home it will produce a photo you’ll be proud of. There’s also a commemorative $799 Eclipse Edition of the S30 Pro tied to this specific eclipse — same optics as the standard Pro, a numbered keepsake for the premium.

Two practical notes from the way these actually behave. First, set up and start tracking well before the eclipse begins — the app’s scheduling (Plan mode on the S30 Pro) can run the capture while you watch with your eyes, which is the whole point. Second, my blunt advice for totality with a smart telescope: leave the solar filter on and let it keep shooting the disk. Yes, that means the scope doesn’t capture the corona — but fumbling a filter off and back on in the dark, mid-totality, on a tracking device, is exactly the kind of gear-fiddling that eats your two minutes. Watch totality with your own eyes; that part of the show doesn’t fit in a sensor anyway.

The camera route: filter, focus, settings

If you already own a DSLR or mirrorless camera and a lens of 200mm or longer, you can absolutely do this the classic way — it just demands rehearsal. The kit: a front solar filter for the lens (solar film or a rigid cell — same certification standard as telescope filters), a tripod, and manual everything.

• Focus: manual, on the Sun’s edge or a sunspot, with autofocus switched off. Tape the focus ring once it’s set.
• Partial phases (filter ON): ISO 100, around f/8, and bracket shutter speeds between roughly 1/500 and 1/2000 — the right exposure depends on your specific filter, which is exactly why you practice on the ordinary Sun beforehand.
• Totality only (filter OFF): the corona spans a huge brightness range, so bracket wildly — from about 1/1000 of a second out to a full second at ISO 100–400. There is no single correct exposure; the keepers come from the spread.
• Re-filter before third contact. Set a timer for shorter than totality’s length at your site. The diamond ring will end the safe window faster than you expect.

Shoot RAW, disable image stabilization on the tripod, and decide in advance how many frames you actually need — then stop and look up.

Phones: shoot the scene, not the Sun

A phone’s tiny lens struggles with a half-degree Sun, and pointing it unfiltered at the partial phases can cook its sensor. But phones are the best camera anyone owns for what surrounds the eclipse: the strange silver light in the last minutes before totality, the horizon glowing like a 360-degree sunset, the crowd reacting. If you want a filtered snap of the crescent Sun itself, holding a spare pair of certified eclipse glasses flat over the lens works for a keepsake shot. For anything more, that’s what the smart telescope or the long lens is for.

Practice now — the Sun is always up

Every piece of this kit works on any clear day, and that’s the real preparation: photograph the ordinary Sun a few times before eclipse day and the eclipse itself becomes routine. Sunspot groups drift across the disk over roughly two weeks and make genuinely interesting targets — a Seestar with its filter on, or solar binoculars for visual-only sessions, will show them any week the Sun is active. Then circle August 28, 2026: a deep 96% partial lunar eclipse visible from the Americas and Europe — no filter needed for the Moon, and a fine dress rehearsal for night-sky shooting. And if 2026 doesn’t bring you to the path, August 2, 2027 offers the longest totality over land until 2114. The gear you buy this year is not a one-day purchase.