Total solar eclipse is a very difficult task for astronomical photography. The first reason is the extreme contrast, the second one is relatively small angular size of the Sun which results in the necessity of using a long focal lens. The short duration of total eclipse gives no chance of making any tests or repairing mistakes. The choice of a suitable photographic material is very important. I excluded extremely high speed film of 1600 ASA and more because of their graininess and lower overall image quality. It was not necessary to exclude films of range 400 - 800 ASA because there was remarkable progress in their quality in last several years and nowadays there exist films of 800 ASA speed of excellent quality. The consideration based on parameters of my Maksutov - Cassegrain telescope (10.5/1084mm) led to result that the factor limiting the image quality is the exposure time and not the quality of film itself. The longer the exposure is the greater is the image degradation by air turbulence and mechanical vibrations caused by camera shutter. Sun motion during exposure caused by rotation of the Earth is a reason more of image unsharpness in case that fix tripod is used. The conclusion was to use 800 ASA speed film. Films of this speed have another great advantage compared with 100 ASA film category. It is the great dynamic range (they are very tolerant to overexposure) which is very important for eclipse photography. Finally, Fujicolor Superia 800 (negative film) was chosen as a top quality film in 800 ASA speed category.

Color slide films are widely used by professional photographers for exacting work. They give the best overall image quality and the scanning of slides is very easy. The only disadvantage is that slide films are of remarkably lower dynamic range than negative films. It is the property that makes slide film not very suitable for eclipse photography.