The Lunar Eclipse

Like millions around the world, I set out to photograph the lunar eclipse Sunday night.

Like some of those millions, there were clouds in the image I envisioned.

Like some of those millions, the “blood moon” portion of the evening’s show was really a view of clouds faintly backlit by the moon.

Nonetheless, out came the “Mother Pod” – that’s my really big, heavy tripod that I picked up about 20 years ago to hold two cameras at once for night railroad photography.

If you saw it, you’d understand why it has its’ name.

Out came the camera and the big lens and the 2X extender and the cable release.

And it all got put together.

And I stared at the clouds with my camera, lens, 2X and cable release in front of me.  And stared…

Finally, the clouds showed some promise of breaking up.  Just a bit.  Well, not really, but enough to shoot between some of them.

So, I started to shoot.

And I remembered how much I like digital even though I still miss Kodachrome.  A SD card just doesn’t smell the same as a roll of Kodachrome, but that’s another story.

And I shot.  And shot.  And shot.  “Film” is free, and I get fairly instant feedback, so why not?

I missed the early part of the lunar eclipse due to the clouds.

DSC_1007 420 wm

All in, I took about 140 shots between clouds (or so I thought) of the last third of the event in about 40 minutes until the clouds reclaimed the sky.

Most of them looked good on the screen on the back of the camera.  (Who hasn’t been there before?)

And then I downloaded them and looked at them on the screen.

First, let me say that there are clouds out there that you can’t see in front of the moon.  Didn’t know that at the time.

Anyway… I got about a dozen to a dozen and a half “good” images of the lunar eclipse.

Good thing film is “free” these days…

The lunar eclipse images are in the moon gallery on Laughing Frog Images.

Check them out and think about the possibilities for that bad patch on your wall or a gift for someone worthy…

Enjoy!

Technical stuff: raw images exposed at ISO 1000, f16, 1/160 or 1/250 second.

The exposures of images 1-3 were equalized using the Light EQ function in ACDSee Pro 8 to bring out the detail in the surface of the moon and to compensate for the uneven lighting. 

Absent this action, the lower part of the moon is washed out from the sun’s light.