NASA says that most welding lenses are too low a shade. Mine are shade 10 and they say no lower than shade 12 is acceptable. I looked through 2 layers of shade 10 today to see what it looks like and it was quite dark (considerably darker than through a single lens) so perhaps that might be OK? Hopefully it won't burn out the chip in my camera because I'll try taking some pictures too. Safest way is to watch the eclipse in the electronic display screen of a digital camera.