There are two rules for a total solar eclipse. Keep your eyes protected. And your cameras down… 

(The eyes is a must; the cameras is more of a stay-in-the-moment kind of thing). 

Protecting your eyes is pretty non-negotiable. Except during the few minutes of totality itself, you must never look at the Sun without proper protection. 

Using your camera throughout the whole thing will be your biggest regret in totality. You’ve travelled a long way for six minutes that won’t come again in your lifetime. 

This guide covers both. (Read it before you go, not on the day…!)

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Part one - Protect Your Eyes

The reason the partial phases of an eclipse are so dangerous is precisely that they don’t feel dangerous. 

The sun during a partial eclipse looks manageable, a bright crescent, easy to glance at, but it is still blindingly intense, and your retina has no pain receptors to warn you.

You can burn it without feeling a thing, and the damage, called solar retinopathy, can be permanent. There is no “looking quickly.” Seconds are enough.

Eclipse glasses

These are really the only thing that work.

For every part of the eclipse except totality, you need certified solar viewers, i.e. “eclipse glasses” that meet the international standard ISO 12312-2. 

These are thousands of times darker than sunglasses, and ordinary sunglasses (however dark, however many you stack) are useless and dangerous here. 

Do not improvise with smoked glass, exposed film, CDs or the like.

Check your glasses before you rely on them.

They should carry the ISO 12312-2 reference and come from a reputable maker.

Through them you should see essentially nothing except the Sun itself — no lamps, no bright windows, only the Sun’s disc.

Inspect them for scratches, pinholes or creases in the filter. If in doubt, don’t use them.

Bring a spare pair, and a spare for the person next to you who forgot.

Note: Koryo Tours will provide a pair of Solar Eclipse glasses for everyone on the Eastern Libya Total Solar Eclipse 2027 trip.  

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Enjoying Totality

During totality (and only during totality, when the Moon completely covers the Sun’s bright face) you can and absolutely should look with the naked eye. 

This is the whole point. The corona is not dangerous. It’s about as bright as a full Moon, and no filter will show it.

Take the glasses off and look.

In Benghazi in August 2027, this will last for around 6 minutes or more. 6 minutes of complete darkness, right in the middle of the day. 

The danger is at the edges of totality. 

As totality ends, the first sliver of the Sun’s surface returns as a brilliant point. This is known as the “diamond ring,” preceded and followed by “Baily’s beads,” where sunlight streams through the valleys on the Moon’s edge. 

The instant that first bead of light appears, the glasses go back on and stay on. 

That transition is the single most important safety moment of the whole event, so know it’s coming and don’t be caught looking.

Binoculars, telescopes and camera lenses

Never point binoculars, a telescope or a camera through eclipse glasses. 

Any optic concentrates the Sun’s light, and eclipse glasses held to the eye behind a lens will not survive it. Nor will your eye. 

Optics need a proper solar filter fitted over the front of the instrument, not at the eyepiece. If you’re bringing binoculars for the corona during totality (lovely, and safe only then), you still need front filters for every other moment.

The safe way to watch the partial phases

If you’d rather not stare through filters for an hour, projection is a pleasant, safe alternative. A simple pinhole in a card throws a small crescent image of the eclipsed Sun onto a surface behind it. 

Look at the ground under a leafy tree during the partial phases, and you’ll see dozens of little crescents scattered through the dappled shade. One of the quiet delights of an eclipse.

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What Exactly Are You Seeing? 

Half of enjoying an eclipse is knowing what’s about to happen, so you’re not startled into missing it. So, we go over things below. 

The sequence runs roughly like this:

First contact

The Moon takes its first bite out of the Sun. Glasses on. Nothing dramatic yet. This is the long slow build.

The partial hour 

Over the next hour or so, the crescent narrows. Look for the pinhole crescents in shade. The light doesn’t dim much until quite late.

The last minute before totality 

Now it moves fast. The light goes oddly metallic and grey, the temperature drops noticeably, shadows sharpen, and if you’re lucky you’ll catch faint ripples of light “shadow bands”, sliding across the ground.

Baily’s beads and the diamond ring 

The final points of sunlight fracture along the Moon’s edge, then blaze in one last brilliant flash.

Totality

The light goes. The corona snaps into view around a black disc. Pink prominences may flare at the edge. A 360-degree sunset glows all around the horizon. Planets and bright stars appear in a midday sky. This is your close-to-six-minutes. Look up!

Second diamond ring 

The Sun returns on the far side. Glasses back on the instant it does. Then the whole thing plays out in reverse to last contact.

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Photographing the Total Solar Eclipse

You can take wonderful photographs of a total eclipse. You can also spend the entire 6 minutes fighting your gear and miss the thing itself. 

We can suggest you don’t use cameras or equipment at all but at the end of the day, if you want to photograph it, you want to photograph it. And you’ll only have this one chance at this so-called ‘Eclipse of the Century’ so why not. 

That being said, if you decide photos are important, do try to keep it simple and automated so you can still look up.

Here’s how to do it well.

The desert’s real enemy is dust, not cloud

Everywhere else, eclipse photographers fret about cloud. 

On the Libyan coast in August where we will be, cloud is famously scarce. 

(The whole reason we’re here). 

The thing that will actually ruin your shots is dust. On the front element, on the sensor, in the mechanism. 

Come prepared - 

A rocket blower and a stack of microfibre cloths, used often.

Keep gear bagged until the last sensible moment, and minimise lens changes in the open.

If you can avoid swapping lenses in the field entirely.

Gear - 

Camera - Any interchangeable-lens camera (mirrorless or DSLR) gives you the control you need. A phone alone won’t capture the corona so well, but it’s great for the scene (see below).

A telephoto lens for the Sun and corona. Something in the region of 300–600mm (full-frame equivalent). Longer fills the frame with the corona, too long and you’ll clip the outer streamers.

A wide lens for context. The darkened landscape, the horizon glow, a column of Cyrene or the desert skyline against the black Sun. These “eclipse-in-place” shots are often more memorable than a tight corona.

A sturdy tripod. Non-negotiable for the telephoto.

A front-mounted solar filter (ISO 12312-2 / ND5-class) for the partial phases.

A remote release or intervalometer, so you’re not jogging the camera, and so you can let it run while you watch.

Filter on, filter off, and the golden rule

For every partial phase, the solar filter stays on the lens (the Sun is far too bright for the sensor otherwise, and you’ll only capture the crescent as a blown-out blob without it). 

The instant totality begins, take the filter off. The corona is faint and the filter will hide it completely. 

The instant totality ends, the filter goes straight back on. 

Settings

Shoot manual, and set focus to infinity during the partial phase, then lock it.  Autofocus will hunt uselessly on a black sky.

Keep ISO low-ish (100–400) for clean files.

For totality, bracket your exposures widely. Anywhere from around 1/1000s to a full second. This is the single most useful thing to know - the corona’s brightness range is enormous, and different shutter speeds reveal completely different things. Fast shutter speeds catch the inner corona and the pink prominences at the edge. Slow ones pull out the faint outer streamers reaching far into the sky. No single exposure captures it all, so take a spread and combine later if you like.

Phones

Your phone is the wrong tool for the corona but the right one for almost everything else. The eerie twilight, the faces of the people around you, the 360-degree sunset, the silhouette of the group against a darkened horizon. 

Do not point it at the partial Sun without a filter in front of it. Bright partial sunlight can damage a phone sensor, and the image is useless anyway. 

During totality, though, a phone will happily capture the mood, if not the disc.

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Koryo Tours
Libya Group Tours