PhotogHobbyist Loc: Bradford, PA

Because there will soon be a solar eclipse with a path of totality that will be very close to us, my wife and I both would like to see it. In preparation for the event I made purchase of special eclipse filter glasses for us and special filters for my cameras. Today to experiment and practice geting an exposure of the sun, I placed a filter on one camera and took the attached photo of the bright sun.

The photo is not perfect, far from it, but I wanted to get an idea of starting exposure settings. I think I am close but will need a bit more practice and experimenting. The attached image is SOOC except cropped closely and saved as a jpeg for posting here. It was not easy aiming and centering, That will improve as I practice, I hope.

(Download)

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

Nice try! Yes it was difficult to center during last partial eclipse.
I used Nikon Zfc with zoom to 600 plus 1.4 teleconverter.
Key is strong tripod and gentle touch on shutter button.
Many a moon ago had bulb with long hose and plunger that screwed into Mamiya Sekor 500DTL wish modern cameras would take it! Could shoot using foot.
Hope your camera has swing out screen, that saved my neck.
Had to remember to put on eclipse glasses when looking directly and removing them to look at screen
Needed frequent exposure adjustments to prevent washing out of sun.
Cannot imagine doing this with film camera
Good luck! Let’s all hope for a clear day, plan to be in Horseshoe bay Texas

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Good start. After you get focus and exposure correct, You might set your camera to mirror lockup and 2 second delay if it's a DSLR. If mirrorless, it should be easy to get the exposure and focus correct in the display screen, but still set a delay for the shutter.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Not too sure what camera/lens combo you're using but I'm assuming the combo would allow autofocus, i.e.: it would appear your picture is out of focus or you'd see some of the sunspots present?

bwa

Reuss Griffiths Loc: Ravenna, Ohio

Just notice what bwana said. He and I had a long conversation about making images of the sun. If your interest is just to get sharp focus pictures of the sun, then you can do it hand-held and get some pretty good images. It starts with what lens you are using. There's a rule of thumb, for sharp hand-held images, you need to have a shutter speed that is at least 1/two times the focal length. If you're using a 300 mm lens then your shutter speed needs to be at least 1/600 or faster i.e., 1/750 or 1/1000. Start out with an ISO of 1000 and a shutter speed of 1/1000 and take a picture of the sun with the filter on it. Pick an aperture of f8 but it doesn't really matter since you're essentially going to be at infinity for focus where depth of field doesn't matter. Auto focus works just fine. If your image is a bright white sun, drop the ISO until it's yellow or orange. I do this all the time just to see what's going on with the sun as this is a period of high sunspot activity. This technique will work just fine for partial eclipses too.

So you can practice now for images in 2 months. Give it a shot and good luck with the images and good luck with the weather in April.

Note sunspots center and center left, some smaller ones lower right