Eclipse help

[La_Displuke (Luke)]

Hi everyone, tonight i am setting up my 8 inch dob f6 with my canon 60d to take some photos of the Eclipse. I was wondering what camera settings you would recommend as i am a complete camera noob and as its not a really long event i won't have too much time to waste on experimentation.
Any advice would be great

Cheers and clear skies

[Cosmic (Daniel)]

My 550d I use 1/320 100 iso and well...just tweak it from there. Every set up is a little different to the other, but you should be right. Live view will be you're friend.

[zenith (Tim)]

Hi,
You will have plenty of time in the hour before total eclipse to experiment. Use live view and magnify 10x to get sharp focus.
You might need an extension tube to get focus - see if you can achieve focus during the day on a far away tree.
You'll probably be using settings like ISO 200, f4, 1/500th, start with that and keep checking the result until you get a nicely exposed disc.
Good luck, clear skies.

[SkyWatch (Dean)]

During the last eclipse I was using f5 ISO 800 and down to 1 second during totality. This one wont be as dark, and totality is only for a few minutes- so perhaps around 1/4-1/2 sec at those settings. Do lots of bracketing!
Out of totality you will overexpose the bright parts really quickly if you try to get the darker parts: so again lots of bracketing and much faster shutter speeds: 1/100, 1/200 even 1/500, and you will have a lot more time to play than during totality.

Have fun!

- Dean

[RobF (Rob)]

The clouds are going to add an extra element of fun.
You'll probably be shooting through holes and brightening/darkening light cloud.

Hope you're lucky and get a hole!