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Today, we witness one of the biggest celestial events of the millennium – an annular solar eclipse that will be the longest until December 23, 3043. The eclipse will last 11 mins 7.7 seconds maximum and I’m sure there are several photography enthusiasts who would like to capture it in their frames.

However, taking photos of a solar eclipse could be very harmful to your eyes and also the equipment you use. Here are a set of instructions that you should strictly follow to safely take photos of a solar eclipse:

1) Setup your equipment early. If you have a tripod, this is the time to bring it out as it will save you from looking directly into the sun and also let you take long exposure shots.

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

3) If you have a DSLR or a camera with interchangeable lenses, put on the lens with the longest focal length. A focal length of 200mm to 5oomm should give you a really good picture 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, aperture size of 8-16 and focus on infinity. Take a series of photos at every shutter speed ranging 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 choose the best of the lot offline. If you don’t have bracketing, manually change the exposure level for your shots so that you don’t miss out on the magic. The low exposure shots will give you the details, the high exposure shots will give you better outer coronal features and you can also combine them later to create an HDR image.

6) Take a few long exposure shots to further capture the coronal features better.

7) To take group photos during the eclipse, project the image of the eclipse on a wall or in water using a reflector and shoot against the backdrop.

The National Center for Biological Sciences, Bangalore is doing a study of the behaviour of birds and animals before, during and after the solar eclipse. If you would like to support their research, please submit your observations to Eclipse Watch and post any photos of the eclipse, pets, animals, birds etc during the eclipse at the Eclipse Watch Lifeblob.