Photographing a lunar eclipse
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Last Wednesday there was a lunar eclipse. Here in the south of Brazil, the moon was completely hidden around midnight.
I snapped this shot from my apartment balcony at 11:18, before the eclipse was total. I used a 500mm mirrored Tokina lens, with fixed f/8, speed 1/160 and ISO 200. My Nikon D70 was mounted on a tripod. No cropping and no Photoshop used - except for resizing and recompressing.
I wanted to get a clear shot of Saturn, that was made visible by the eclipse, so I took some long exposures (which I promise to publish soon), leaving the moon one big ball of light. When the eclipse was complete, its easier to see the other elements in the sky. I thought of maybe overlaying both pics in Photoshop to get a clearer view of every thing.
Sorry for not posting more of the eclipse photos, but I wanted to start writing right away and not delay this blog any longer. Promise I’ll post them as soon as I get back home in Porto Alegre.
