ROCHESTER, N.Y. – The countdown is on until eclipse day.

As your eclipse headquarters, News10NBC wanted to find out the best ways to capture this historic moment, whether you’re using a professional camera or just your phone.

On April 8, Rochester is in a prime spot for viewing the eclipse, being in the path of totality – which means for nearly four minutes, the moon will move in front of the sun, plunging our area into darkness in the middle of the afternoon. The last time this happened was in 1925.

If you want to capture the eclipse on your camera or your phone, filters and lens are important, specifically solar filters that help protect you from the sun as you’re shooting.

George Eastman Museum’s Technology Director Damien Spader said, a good idea is to practice ahead of time to get to know your camera and become familiar with the difference lenses and filters.

“If you have a DSLR or a mirrorless camera you are going to want at least a 300 mm telephoto lens that’s going to capture the sun, but also is going to leave enough of the frame for the corona as that begins to reveal itself and then obviously a solar filter, making sure you have a solar filter screwed on the front of the lens and from there you will be safe.”

“If you do have a camera without an electronic display, neutral density filters are not enough to protect our eyes as well,” he said. “So that UV radiation will still go back and hit your retina and still do some damage. The tricky part about that is that our eyes don’t have pain receptors, so whatever is happening back there we won’t know until it’s too late.”

Regular sunglasses or peeking through your fingers or through a pinhole is not safe.