And yet another blood moon................

[Jannyfox]

After looking at the threads already on here I'm embarrased to post this, but I made the effort to get up at 0315 so I will. It was a very dark eclipse - the Moon was deep in the Earth's shadow. Having missed the early stages (I'd have loved to have seen it from start to finish but work............... you know) and not had the foresight to take the camera outside at moonrise to focus, I found focussing incredibly difficult. Tried autofocus, manual focus and live view but kept trying to 'tweek' it as I couldn't convince myself it was right. It was also slightly misty which didn't help (by the time I got up the second time it was thick fog). At 300mm I was getting slight trailing in the stars at 2 seconds so I chopped that to 1 second at iso 800.

Total lunar eclipse by Jan, on Flickr

 

[Norkie]

Looks a cracker to me

 

[Dannyj1984]

Nice shot I woke up at 3:15 to go outside and it looked grey to me, I must of still been half asleep so I went back to bed

 

[Jannyfox]

Nice shot I woke up at 3:15 to go outside and it looked grey to me, I must of still been half asleep so I went back to bed

I was mostly asleep.......... I'd put everything out ready before going to bed (the first time) and the last thing I said to myself as I turned out the living room light was 'don't fall over the tripod'. 0315, alarm goes of, get up, walk through house in the dark...... straight into the tripod leg. Fortunately I'm not very big and it's pretty sturdy, so it didn't end with camera and lens crashing to the ground.

 

[Skyline]

That's a beauty. Well done

 

[xmh]

I was mostly asleep.......... I'd put everything out ready before going to bed (the first time) and the last thing I said to myself as I turned out the living room light was 'don't fall over the tripod'. 0315, alarm goes of, get up, walk through house in the dark...... straight into the tripod leg. Fortunately I'm not very big and it's pretty sturdy, so it didn't end with camera and lens crashing to the ground.

Great shot, similar story here, back yard, upstairs to comp, quick check, back down and out to the back garden, another few shots and repeat. I think the only one that slept through it in our house was the dog

 

[Grant.Baxter1989]

Out of interest how the heck did you get this pic so well? What settings did you use? When i try taking shots of the moon, everything around is dark. Did you take multiple shots?

 

[Mark Johnson]

Its a good enough shot via the camera lens. The focus is good as you can see stars behind the moon as pin pricks. I always have the same problem with focus, but at least with the moon the camera can get a focus by its own. Once I have this I change to manual focus and keep my fingers away form the focus ring. Its a useful technique for photoing stars which can be very tricky to get focused properly.

Hope you don't mind me uploading my effort, cropped in PS but leaving colouring as the camera has produced in RAW, and stored in a jpg. My stars are slightly elongated, thus the exposure was slightly too long I guess...Alas

Setting were 1" at f6.7, and ISO 1600. Camera was EPL5 with a 300mm lens and digital converter times 2. Thus an EFL of 1200mm.....

Mj

 

[Jannyfox]

Out of interest how the heck did you get this pic so well? What settings did you use? When i try taking shots of the moon, everything around is dark. Did you take multiple shots?

No need for multiple shots but it's all manual. The 300mm end of a Tamron 70-300, f5.6 (which is wide open at 300mm), iso800 as anything more would probably have been overwhelmingly noisy, then I played with the exposure time to try to get an accurate reflection of what I was seeing, ie a very dark eclipse, which ended up at 1 sec. At 2 sec I got slight trailing (elongating) of the stars, although I couldn't see that on the screen even when zoomed right in. I only saw it when I viewed the shots on the computer monitor. I used a tripod (obviously) and a cable release to avoid touching the camera.

Its a good enough shot via the camera lens. The focus is good as you can see stars behind the moon as pin pricks. I always have the same problem with focus, but at least with the moon the camera can get a focus by its own. Once I have this I change to manual focus and keep my fingers away form the focus ring. Its a useful technique for photoing stars which can be very tricky to get focused properly. What you see here is a pretty big crop of the original.

Hope you don't mind me uploading my effort, cropped in PS but leaving colouring as the camera has produced in RAW, and stored in a jpg. My stars are slightly elongated, thus the exposure was slightly too long I guess...Alas

Setting were 1" at f6.7, and ISO 1600. Camera was EPL5 with a 300mm lens and digital converter times 2. Thus an EFL of 1200mm.....

Mj
View attachment 47366

Nice one Mark. Your exposure time to prevent the stars trailing is going to be much shorter than mine, and of course if the stars move the Moon moves too. Then you need a driven mount............ I have one but I didn't use it. Focus is easy when the Moon isn't eclipsed. Auto focus works perfectly and the auto focus then flick to manual to hold it is a technique I use all the time in landscape. Maybe my autofocus was getting it right, it was just that I couldn't tell. I'm slightly long sighted and never wear glasses for photography so trying to judge focus on the screen is hopeless.

 

[cjt2011]

Great shot there

 

[Steve B]

Out of interest how the heck did you get this pic so well? What settings did you use? When i try taking shots of the moon, everything around is dark. Did you take multiple shots?

If you mean being able to see the stars in the same shot as the moon, you wont be able to do it under normal conditions as the moon is far brighter than the stars. During an eclipse though, the stars are much brighter than the moon while it is in the earths shadow, so it is possible to get both in a single shot.
Hope this helps ???