Staying in focus on April 8th

Photographers of the upcoming April 8 total eclipse have a lot at stake.

I was trying to think of an analogy for people who haven’t photographed a total eclipse before. The best I found was to imagine you’re charged with shooting the 1500m Olympic final.

It only lasts a few minutes. There’ll be many excited people around. You have to capture the build-up to the start and all the key moments of the race. And of course, you must catch the finish! Miss any of it, and the exact moment will never be repeated. The next similar race is years away.

That’s pretty close to what photographing a total eclipse is like.

It’s critical for photographers to remain focused both mentally and photographically, free of unwanted distractions.

Just like the start of a race, the moments before totality are crucial - everything happens in mere seconds. The last thing you want is an unexpected interruption from your mobile phone.

At the same time, you may be relying on your phone to provide time sensitive notifications of the approaching totality - as The Photographer’s Ephemeris app on iOS does - to ensure you catch magical eclipse phenomena such as Baily’s Beads or the Diamond Ring.

Staying in Focus

It’s easy to ensure you’re set up for the moment: configure a custom Eclipse Focus Mode on your phone.

Here’s how.

In the phone’s system Settings, choose Focus, then tap + at the top right to add a new focus mode. When asked “ What do you want to focus on? ”, choose Custom so we can set up exactly what we need.

I named my new focus mode ‘Eclipse’ and gave it a ‘chromospheric’ pink outline icon:

I allowed notifications from Alice and other Favorite contacts to ensure the most important people in my life can reach me. Then, under Apps, I chose to Allow Notifications From only FaceTime, Messages, Weather, and Photo Ephemeris (TPE) itself, which I’ll be using to receive eclipse timing announcements:

Next, I scrolled down the page to Focus Filters. I set my display to Always On and enabled Dark Mode to avoid anything too bright in my eyes near the camera during totality.

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPad, you can also choose to disable Silent Mode - this is a critical step to ensure you can hear the eclipse announcements. On other iPhones you’ll need to do this manually by moving the Silent Mode switch on the side of your device to Off.

There are also options to customize Screens and to set a Schedule when the focus mode should switch on - be sure to check those out and see what might work best for you.

Finally, you’ll want to enable your new Eclipse Focus Mode and test it out. The user interface for this can be a little confusing at first - you can have either no focus mode enabled (left), or one focus mode enabled (right). Only one mode can be toggled on at a time:

With Eclipse Focus enabled, you can now schedule a test notification in Photo Ephemeris to confirm that you hear the announcement as expected. You can also run a rehearsal and familiarize yourself with the exact timings of the eclipse at your planned location:

Photo Ephemeris iOS includes a detailed notifications status page that shows if you have notifications set up optimally for the day. Apple provides a very rich set of notification options that can be complicated to puzzle out. The app gives you guidance on what will work best.

Help yourself on eclipse day by setting up your ideal focus mode - and testing it out - well in advance.

Read more about the new event countdown and notifications features here.

App Store artwork for our dedicated Solar Eclipse page can be downloaded from here.