How to safely photograph a solar eclipse with a cell phone: A guide to the celestial spectacle

Protection comes first: Do not look at the Sun

The absolute priority is safety. Never, under any circumstances, look directly at the Sun without certified protection, such as specialized eclipse glasses, because ordinary sunglasses are not enough. The same goes for your phone. Its optics act like a magnifying lens, concentrating sunlight and heat on a small sensor surface. Prolonged exposure without a filter can literally burn out the photodiodes and cause the device to thermally shut down, leaving permanent black spots or “dead pixels” on future photos.

Necessary equipment you can’t live without

The most important part of the equipment is a certified solar filter that meets the ISO 12312-2 standard. You don’t have to buy expensive accessories; an affordable option is to carefully cut out the lens of one of the certified glasses and firmly attach it with adhesive tape over all the camera lenses on the mobile phone. It is important that there are no gaps. For sharp and stable shots, especially when using zoom, a tripod is necessary. It frees your hands and enables calm framing. To avoid shaking the device when shooting, use the self-timer. with a delay of a few seconds or a practical Bluetooth trigger.

The right settings for the perfect photo

Automatic settings will probably not give good results because the Sun will look like an overexposed blob. Switch to “Pro” or manual mode. The first step is to lock the focus and exposure, which is usually done by long pressing the Sun on the screen. Then, drastically reduce the exposure by dragging the slider down to get a clearly defined Sun’s disk. Use a low ISO value (100-200) and a high shutter speed, eg 1/1000 s. If the phone has more lenses, use optical zoom instead of digital zoom, which degrades quality. For maximum post-processing flexibility, shoot in RAW format. It saves all the data from the sensor, unlike JPEG, and gives better results after editing.