In March 06 myself wife and son travelled to Turkey for a weeks holiday to coincide with the total Eclipse.  The plan was to enjoy some spring sunshine relax and take in the sites and if the weather was kind get to view and image the Eclipse with 3 mins 40 sec of totality . The trip was planned over a year ago via the internet with the location in a hotel in Side, looking at the site we would be less than half a kilometre from the centre line and the hotel was high over looking the sea to give great views of the shadow approach from the south west, that was if the weather was kind to us, as the chance was only around the 40% mark for clear skies in Turkey at this time of year. As it turned out all was fine on the day and the day before, this was a great help and allowed me to set up all the gear the day before and do some test runs on all the gear.I took with me to image the Eclipse around 50KG of gear comprising of a full GP mount with dual motors, a Takahashi FS60c F5.6 Fluorite APO, laptop, Canon 20D Digital SLR and a second tripod for a Canon digital camcorder to record some movie of the eclipse, this with two 12V battery packs for power and a box of repair goodies, screwdrivers, gaffer tape, chargers for packs and camera soon mount up to six large flight cases of gear + suitcases of clothes , the wife and son soon found out why I insisted they come with me to the Eclipse. The Eclipse day was perfect, clear blue sky greeted us in the morning so after breakfast it was power up the gear do some final focus checks and wait for first contact. Having done the Annular Eclipse in Madrid the October before I knew what exposure and ISO settings would work for the partial phase but the totality was a new ball game for me, but thanks to the internet before I left a set of exposures was worked out for Baileys beads, diamond ring, inner and outer corona these were written out in bold black felt tip and taped to the tripod to keep me on track when the world went mad at totality.  My plan was to take at least four exposures at each setting, this with download time to the memory card allowed me to view direct a large amount of the eclipse. I shot all the partial phase in JPG with one shot every 2 mins and just before totality I put new batteries in the camera and changed memory card to a one gig card and changed to shoot in RAW format but still keeping the ISO setting to 100,  this would give me the best dynamic range of the camera and images with good depth when the 4 composite images were combined at each speed setting  these started at 1/50 sec  all the way to  1/2 and 1 second shots for the outer corona. from first to fourth contact I only lost 4 frames, all the frames were shot manually with the Canon remote shutter. The day before I did plan out a sequence routine with software to fully automate the eclipse from laptop but when I ran the sequence it only worked due to software bugs 2 times out of the 6 runs I tried,  this was not a time to take chances and ended shooting it manually. This was my third Eclipse but nothing prepares you for totality and the true splendour a total eclipse can bring and even the most worked out plans still leave you feeling you wish you had six pairs of eyes to look at this, or try and see that.  I did manage to see the ISS do its totality flyby, Venus, Mercury and a truly fantastic Corona with the last Diamond ring permanently burnt into the back of my retinas, with the images I shot I can only try and capture the true splendour of the event and hope you enjoy them.