Lunar Eclipse.

[Mr. B]

"Skywatchers expect the eclipse to occur over a three-and-a-half hour period, starting at 10:33 p.m. PT today and ending 2:01 a.m. PT tomorrow. The Earth's shadow will completely cover the moon for about 72 minutes, according to NASA's eclipse page. The shadow is likely to have a reddish hue."

Rare lunar eclipse expected tonight | The Digital Home - CNET News



I'll be out with my GF shooting it.
Possible down on 288 somewhere in the farmland.

I'll have my 80-400mm and a 910mm Meade Telescope with Nikon T-Mount.

I'll also be shooting with an IR D100 if anyone has any IR tips.




EXCIDETE?!?

Yes, so much so I can't spell haha.

[sheribeari]

going to try to get some shots in... hope they come out good. Any tips anyone??

[Mr. B]

Tripod! haha

This is one I did on a normal night.


November Moon by BrianVogel, on Flickr

[spluloacle]

Any chance of me with a T1i and a 50mm 1.8 II lens getting any good shots or should I just enjoy?

[cooltouch]

Has anyone talked about a meetup for the eclipse?

Here's a pic I took of the full moon last month:



I find that the full moon often looks flat because of the front lighting. October last year I took a shot of the moon one day past full and the slight amount of side lighting accentuated the features more:



Years ago, I picked up the tip that correct exposure for the full moon is 1/125 @ f/8 @ ISO 100. I've always used this exposure setting or one stop more. I've come to prefer f/11 over f/8 because it gives more contrast. Both of the photos above were shot at 1/125 @ f/11 @ ISO 100.

Something you want to keep in mind about the eclipse, though, is the light will be dropping off dramatically once totality has begun, so you'll want to adjust ISO/aperture/shutter speeds accordingly. You can't let the shutter speeds get too slow, though, or else you'll be suffering from the moon's motion-induced blur.

A few more tips --

I'd say just about the absolute minimum focal length for this is 300mm if you want to record any significant level of detail. The above pics were taken with a 650mm and a 500mm respectively.

A stout tripod is a must.

Either a remote release or a self timer with at least 10 seconds duration is required. You need to let all vibrations caused by focusing and touching the camera to trip the self timer to have settled down before the shutter fires.

If you have a long auto-focus telephoto, then great -- you're probably set. But if you're like me and you're using an old T-mount manual focus lens, well in that case, I strongly recommend some type of focusing aid. You cannot rely on the infinity mark on your lens -- it won't be accurate enough. If your DSLR has Live View, use it to confirm focus (I'd recommend you do this even if you're using an AF tele). If you don't have LV, use some sort of viewfinder magnification eyepiece accessory. If you don't, focus will be hit-or-miss, most likely miss.

[Mr. B]

Originally Posted by spluloacle

Any chance of me with a T1i and a 50mm 1.8 II lens getting any good shots or should I just enjoy?

Oh you can most definitely get some good pictures.
They will be more like this though:


35mm sunset^

[Mr. B]

50mm moons shot (Not Mine):

[Mr. B]

Originally Posted by cooltouch

Tip talk

Thanks for the tips, sounds good.
I'll be using a T-Mount Meade Telescope and am very excited.

I'll be meeting with some people on the west side of town then driving to the south side.

[Jim Boyd]

You know, a 50mm moon shot might look pretty good tonight. Set the moon on the left side of your frame at about 12:30 am and shoot one shot every 20 to 30 minutes. As long as you where parallel to the moon's movement (actually the earth's movement), you might end up with some pretty good shots that you could stack. Heck, what do I know.

[cooltouch]

Originally Posted by spluloacle

Any chance of me with a T1i and a 50mm 1.8 II lens getting any good shots or should I just enjoy?

Welp, you can shoot a montage that you can put together afteward. If you google "lunar eclipse montage" (w/o quotes), you'll get a bunch of hits showing what I mean.

[Jim Boyd]

Michael,

Are you talking about a 10 second exposure at full eclipse?

[cooltouch]

Originally Posted by Jim Boyd

You know, a 50mm moon shot might look pretty good tonight. Set the moon on the left side of your frame at about 12:30 am and shoot one shot every 20 to 30 minutes. As long as you where parallel to the moon's movement (actually the earth's movement), you might end up with some pretty good shots that you could stack. Heck, what do I know.

Actually when I mentioned montage, that's what I was thinking of. You'll end up with an arc. I've seen this done before, but the closest I could find in the google links was a complete circle.

[cooltouch]

Originally Posted by Jim Boyd

Michael,

Are you talking about a 10 second exposure at full eclipse?

10 seconds is way too long. You'll get motion-induced blur. The slowest I'd go would be about 1/30 second, then adjust aperture and ISO to make up for things. The 10 seconds I was referring to above was the length of time the self timer runs before tripping the shutter. And 10 seconds is a minimum.

[cooltouch]

Originally Posted by Mr. B

Thanks for the tips, sounds good.
I'll be using a T-Mount Meade Telescope and am very excited.

I'll be meeting with some people on the west side of town then driving to the south side.

Whereabouts on the west side? I live in the Spring Branch area, just north of I-10. I wouldn't mind meeting up with other like-minded folks.

[Mr. B]

Originally Posted by cooltouch

Whereabouts on the west side? I live in the Spring Branch area, just north of I-10. I wouldn't mind meeting up with other like-minded folks. Since the eclipse will begin at 8:33 pm CST, this means I'll have to go somewhere, since my neighborhood is full of tall trees. I usually can't get a shot of the full moon until about 10pm.

I live off 6 just south of 10.
I'm working on getting my telescope ready now, and we may meet up here. Not sure yet.