What are the best settings for getting a sharp shot of the sun with a halo of 'classic' sunbeams? I shot with a 5D Mark III and the 24-105 at f11 and with a LCW Variable ND. I had a hard time getting the focus right. How do you avoid potential damage to your camera when trying to get the shot?

Not sure how helpful this is but since no one else has responded there's some shots in this video of a guy welding about one minute into this video, not the sun but really bright nonetheless. I shot an hour of this with no damage to my sensor. 1965 MUSTANG-SEMA 2011 on Vimeo

Generally if I want to shoot into the sun and get a well defined "star burst" I shoot at as low an ISO as possible, 5d3 would be ISO 50 with an f-22 or higher and a shutter speed of 50 (for 24FPS frame rate) then adjust the variable ND to get the exposure correct.

Thanks, Chuck. I'll give it a shot...