Thursday, October 1, 2015

Lunar Eclipse

I've never tried taking pics of a lunar eclipse before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The moonrise was at about 6:45 PM here on the west coast. Right from the start, at least half the moon was obscured by the eclipse.

I had a great vantage point from which to view the eclipse, and to the northwest, the skies were nicely lit up as people waited for the moon. Evidently, my vantage point isn't much of a secret!

As the moon moved higher on the horizon, the visible crescent became smaller...

And smaller... this one reminds me of an eyeball or a diamond ring!

And smaller still. Here, just the slightest edge is illuminated.

Same image as above, just cropped. I like this shot... never seen a moon look like this before!

Finally, the moon just kind of disappeared for a while. Without a strong telephoto lens, binoculars, or a telescope, you would have been disappointed. People around me started to chit chat, and a few left. However, viewed through my telephoto lens, I could see the faint moon picking up a definite reddish tint by about 7:45 PM.


F/11, 2 sec exposure, 800mm, ISO 3200
The biggest challenges of shooting a lunar eclipse? 1] It's a very "dull" moon, so you must manually focus (difficult with an object putting out very little light). 2] The moon is moving quickly, so you need to keep your exposure at or under about 2 seconds or it will be blurry. Not an issue at all for a "normal" moon. For a lunar eclipse, it means you really have to push your ISO, which adds grain. Bottom line: Very difficult to get a clear, sharp, non-grainy lunar eclipse shot!!


Hope you had a chance to go out and check out the lunar eclipse! Linking with Skywatch Friday. Click on the link to check out great skies from around the world!!

49 comments:

  1. glad you got to see and photograph it!

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  2. Thank you for these photos and for the clinic in photography! You always reward visits richly











    ALOHA
    ComfortSpiral

    (\__/)
    (='.'=)
    (")_(")

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  3. Oh, WOW!!! These are awesome!! Thank you so much for sharing! I've never seen photos of an eclipse of any kind that are as good as yours!!!

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  4. Fabulous. So many fake ones around, lovely to see genuine blood moon images

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  5. These are beautiful pics of the moon! Thank you for sharing these fantastic images.

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  6. Very nice shots. I found photographing it to be quite the challenge. My Nikdon de5300 did okay but I had charged up the battery on my Canon SX40 super zoom and it came through like a champ. Getting a good shot of the partial moon and when it was emerging was very challenging. I can see why people spend money on sturdy tripods. I had never seen a lunar eclipse over a protracted period before and I loved it.

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  7. Wow! Fantastic captures!
    Clear skies!

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  8. You got some fabulous shots! (We only saw clouds...)

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  9. Fabulous ... I knew I'd see some good moon shots this week .... We didn't get to look for it for boring reasons including being so tired from our recent move. Couldn't have taken such wonderful pictures anyway, so thanks for sharing! It's great to have the combination of your talent and being away from so much light pollution!

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  10. wow - spectacular shots of this wonderful moon !! happy weekend :-)

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  11. My favourite shot here is the one showing the other photographers. Here it happened around 3am so I was soundly asleep but one of my neighbours who has a tripod got some good shots from his garden.

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  12. Great moon shots indeed. What else can I say .

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  13. we were clouded over here in Florida. (frowny face)

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  14. Very nicely captured images of a special lunar event. Have a blessed week-end.

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  15. Really great shots! It fully rose for us before...I was so happy we had clear skies!re the eclipse started

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  16. Great ! Especially the first one .... in Europe the eclipse started in the middle of the night while the moon was already high in the sky ! I bet it was less impressive !

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  17. Thanks for those. To see it in England required getting up in the middle of the night; not a sensible thing to do with a twelve-hour shift to work the following day.

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  18. You have wonderful pictures of this event.

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  19. I am so pleased to see this whole range of photos and to have the comments on your experience because here in England, in the middle of the night, it was not very spectacular, hardly worth crawling out of bed for! It's not going to happen for another thirty years and I doubt I'll be getting out of bed when I'm in my hundreds!

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  20. Nice shots of your moon. I had more problems wtth clouds (see mine) but give more dramatic effects around the moon, I had 200mm only.

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  21. oh wow awesome shots! we didn't get to see the blood moon from NZ but I did get a good shot of it full.

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  22. Fantastic shots of the eclipse, but that sky shot with all those colors is pretty incredible!!

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  23. Nice shots. It was much darker where I was so the Moon was never hard to see, but your tips are right on. Especially through a telephoto lens, the movement is remarkable.

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  24. You did well! We had too many clouds here.

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  25. You got some excellent shots of this phenomenon!

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  26. great shots of the big event. I overslept it as it was due very early in the morning where I live. You have a very long lens. Must be heavy.

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  27. Beautiful series, very nice moon photos

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  28. Anazing photos !!! The moon was really beautiful.

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  29. The eclipse shots are hard to get balance - but, if photography was easy, would we still do it!

    Nice shots. I was asleep when it happened here - too much work!

    Cheers - Stewart M - Melbourne

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  30. You did a fabulous job. Pity the other people left before really seeing the blood moon. You mentioned the ISO on my moon post. Yes, this was the first time for me photographing a lunar eclipse too. I took two sets of settings as my starting point. First - you can get a really good full moon using ISO100, Shutter speed 100 and F stop 8. The other thing I know, having photographed the Aurora Borealis, is that for very low light you need ISO 1600, F stop around 4 or 5, and shutter speed between about 5 and 15 seconds. So I just aimed to gradually reduce shutter speed and increase ISO with the reduction in light from the illuminated moon. As you say, the moon actually moves quite quickly, so it's important not to have too long a shutter speed. I don't know if the settings I used were textbook settings, but they are at least a good starting point. If I get the chance to photograph another eclipse - and hopefully early in the evening like yours - I'll maybe play around a bit more and see what works best. In the meantime, I think we can both be happy with what we produced! :)

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  31. Pues para ser la primera vez, te has conseguido un reportaje excelente; yo lo intenté en una ocasión, y las fotografías fueron un desastre. Gracias por los consejos.
    Un cordial saludo.

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  32. Nice moon shots! Just as our moon was ready to really get "bloody" it disappeared behind some clouds. I have a few fuzzy shots of a red tennis ball.

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  33. Wow! Stunning shots. My sky was clouded over and I was very disappointed not to see it. I can't get good shots anyway, but I really did want to at least watch it.

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  34. These are absolutely stunning photos! Incredible!

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  35. Wow, awesome shots. In Drammen wehad to get up at 4 in the morning. Needed the sleep for a long day at work, so I didn't get up to see it. But when the news served all the details and shots in the morning, I realized I had made wrong priority.

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  36. Hi S P & P, Wow, you got some excellent photos! I did go to a park where there was good viewing to the eastern horizon. Seattle, can you believe it, actually had wonderful clear skies. Got a great view of the eclipse. There were literally hundreds of folks there and plenty of pro looking photographers, with tripods, timers, etc. I decided this time to just enjoy the moment and left the camera at home. All you said about the difficulties of getting a great picture are so true. Congrats on the wonderful pics. It is always a pleasure to stop by your blog.

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  37. Wonderful! Fabulous! Job well done! I wish I got pictures of the event, but didn't. I loved seeing yours, though. So thanks for sharing! Have a great weekend!

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  38. Wow, your pics of the eclipse are amazing! Still haven't gotten to it how to take pics of the moon:(

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  39. You did a fantastic job of photographing it! Well done.

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