Photographing the eclipse in Ceuta: gear, settings and what not to do
A practical guide to photographing the total solar eclipse of 2 August 2027 from Ceuta without frying your sensor or missing totality.
If this is your first total eclipse, do not photograph it
Partial phase: filter mandatory
Throughout the partial phase you need a solar filter in front of the lens, not behind it. Without one you will burn the sensor and, with an optical viewfinder, your eye. With a filter, a reasonable starting point is ISO 100, f/8, adjusting shutter speed until the disc is well exposed; every filter differs, so test on the ordinary Sun days beforehand.
Totality: filter off
- Remove the filter the moment the last sliver of Sun disappears, and replace it before it returns.
- The corona has an enormous dynamic range: bracket widely, from 1/1000 s to 1 s at f/8 and ISO 400, and blend afterwards.
- Focus at infinity manually and tape it down. Autofocus fails against a dark sky.
- Tripod and remote release or timer. At long focal lengths any vibration shows.
- Turn off image review on screen: it steals seconds and wrecks your dark adaptation.
With a phone
Modern phones give respectable results during totality if you steady them. Digital zoom at the Sun does not work. What does work, and almost nobody does, is the opposite: a wide angle capturing the landscape of Ceuta under the light of totality, with the horizon glowing in 360° and people looking up. That is a photograph you can take and no stock library has.
What is genuinely worth preparing
- A time-lapse of the landscape as the light collapses.
- Recording the sound: the birds falling silent and the crowd shouting as totality begins.
- The shadows on the ground during the partial phase: hundreds of crescent Suns under the trees.
- Rehearsing the whole sequence on an ordinary afternoon with the real Sun. There is no second take on the day.