As with other eclipses, I used a 600mm mirror lens plus a x2 convertor to give a reasonable image size. It would, of course, have been dangerous and damaging to have simply pointed the camera straight at the sun so I had to take steps to reduce the intensity of the sun's light. During the 2001 total eclipse I had used a small piece of mylar filter taken from "eclipse specs" placed at the rear of the mirror lens when I briefly viewed the partial phase but felt that to expose it to the sun for about 90mins this time could be asking for trouble. I thus made up a circle of corrugated cardboard as a snug fit into the lens-hood of the mirror lens and mounted on it three squares of filter material in symmetrically arranged cut-outs. By placing the filter material in front of the lens rather than near the focal point the effect of the sun's heat on it was reduced as much as possible. The cut-outs are not seen as discrete squares by the camera as, being so near to the lens, they are well out of focus. In addition to the filter, I also fashioned a large sun-screen which I attached to the barrel of the lens so that it blocked direct view of the sun when I was looking through the viewfinder. This made operating the camera much easier, avoiding one of the major problems I had experienced during the 2001 event.
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