Lunar Eclipse Photography

[Nicole]

So, another lunar eclipse is coming up on August 28th. And it's viewable most places aside from Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia.


From: NASA

And I'm planning to head out to photograph it with a few people. I'd be interested to know if the people who photographed the March one had any tips or tricks to share.

In the mean time, I've been doing a bit of reading on my own about how to photograph an eclipse, and I've come up with quite a few useful links, though some of them do cover the same information as the others.

One of the first things that I found useful was some hints about how to set your exposure for shooting the eclipse. As part of this, I came across the converse to the Sunny 16 rule, which is the Moony 11 rule. So, basically, shooting at f/11 and the inverse of your ISO should get you close to the proper exposure for the moon. Of course, that doesn't necessarily help for when the eclipse is actually happening. But, fear not, there is a guide for lunar eclipse exposures as well (thanks to the really informative Mr Eclipse's site).



Now those are the technical basics, so now there's a whole lot more links that give a general overview of how to photograph eclipses. There's a lot of information to be had in these sites. NASA's site has a great link repository that pointed me to a lot of these sites.

Sites like Starry Skies and the Eclipse Chaser's site offer a good overview of some of the basics. As does this blog post on Digital Lunar Eclipse Photography. And Sky and Telescope offers a 3 page article on photographing the eclipse.

Finally, I got some inspiration from looking at the winners of an eclipse photography contest on Luminous Landscapes.

I'm seriously excited about the whole thing (geeky as it is), so fingers crossed the weather is clear.

So, what else do I need to know before the eclipse next week?

[rediguana]

Given that it will take place over a number of hours, there will probably be plenty of opportunity to review and adjust the technique on the fly. Biggest thing will be having enough batteries to handle reviewing the shots

Perhaps a problem will be the long exposures required at totality. Unless the camera is mounted on a tracking device, the moon will be moving too fast to get a sharp shot given the low light intensity.

[scottdodd]

This might interest you: http://www.lsc.org/getinvolved/eclipse/ It's an Aug. 28 lunar eclipse photography contest that my science center in New Jersey is sponsoring. We'll accept submissions from all over the world, if anyone here wants to enter. We also have some resources for lunar eclipse photography available.

[brianfarrell]

Originally Posted by rediguana

Perhaps a problem will be the long exposures required at totality. Unless the camera is mounted on a tracking device, the moon will be moving too fast to get a sharp shot given the low light intensity.

The exposures aren't that long. This exposure was 5 seconds only: http://tinyurl.com/yr7mhc

[thingy]

I'm getting quite excited about this. Im in peru so it'll be around 4.30am for me to catch shots upto Umbra3 before the moon sets over the sea at about 6.20 or so. I don't get to see it come out of the other side but I'm hoping that with the moon being so low in the atmosphere here at the time of the eclipse that the moon will look bigger! Fingers crossed its not cloudy.

G

[Nicole]

Thanks for the info scottd and everyone else The weather forecast is looking good so far, but there's a reason that the song "4 seasons in 1 day" came from NZ

[rediguana]

I got a new tripod today that can support the telescope's weight, and also allow mounting for when the moon is high in the sky WITH a camera hanging off the back. Also used mirror lockup and a remote shutter release and the pics were quite a bit sharper. Only problem was trying to focus the telescope using the viewfinder. I now need a magnified view finder to improve focusing...

I took quite a few shots this evening, took the two sharpest, and then stacked them using Lynkeos and ended up with this...



My apologies for the tight cropping, the moon moves across the frame pretty quickly at when you're effectively at 2320mm at f13.8 (I believe the telescope was 1450mm with a 1.6x sensor).

Now we just need a clear night next Tuesday

[Nicole]

Wow, now that's a moon shot! Totally jealous of your setup about now

[wulf]

The moon is pretty bright so don't overdo the exposure time. When we saw the previous lunar eclipse in the UK I lent my tripod to a friend who had a 300mm lens and did hand hold shots with the kit lens on my D40. My results weren't that stunning and unfortunately my friend assumed that he needed quite long exposures and didn't check back on the LCD to review results so ended up with bright blobs rather than a detailed image.

The light drops as you reach totality but don't forget the lesson of checking the results as you go along (remembering that any built in metering is likely to struggle with making the right choice unless you use spot metering on the moon itself).

Wulf

[rediguana]

With the moon filling most of the frame, I found this evening that the 20D was pretty much bang on caculating the shutter speed (given it couldn't modify the aperture). Although this was only true when the whole moon was in frame - once it started drifting out of frame, the increasing black areas started to cause incorrect exposure to be calculated and the moon would start to be overexposed.

It may be different near and at totality, and I might start bracketing shots, as well as frequent checking!

Nicole - funnily enough the small telescope, tripod and adapters are probably far less in cost than a decent long prime or zoom. I think I might have spent around $NZD700 on the telescope, tripod and required adapters to connect the camera. Not to mention you can use them without a camera!