Lunar Eclipse - Who photographed it, where, and what equipment did you use?

[brad_hiltbrand]

Last night presented a really great photographic opportunity with

a full lunar eclipse occuring just after sunset with the red moon

low on the horizon. I was alerted to this event on the

Luminous-Landscape site, but have not seen any mention of it

here at photonet.

 

I had planned on photographing from the Marin Headlands,

looking back over the city of San Francisco and the Bay, but was

unable to get away in time to make the trip north (30 miles).

Instead, I decided to photograph it from the Stanford University

campus using Hoover Tower for foreground interest. I was using

my Fuji GA645Zi medium format camera, which has a zoom

range of 33 to 56mm (35mm equivalent). Not nearly the kind of

magnification one would like to use, but with the tower, and

cropping out about half the frame, I hope I get at least one nice

image.

 

Exposure was mostly guesswork as the brightness of the moon

changed over time, and I did not want my foreground subject to

be completely dark. Add the presence of streetlights and I had

some major exposure difficulties. I took a number of exposures

at F8 with times ranging from around 1 sec to 16 seconds

(motion blur of moon likely at the longer end). I just dropped off

my film and will have to wait until Monday to find out well I did.

 

Michael Reichmann was leading a group out the Death Valley for

this celestial event, it will be fun to see the results of his and

others efforts. He is also running a competition for eclipse

photographs.

 

This morning, my wife increased my frustration about not having

time to drive up to SF last night by showing me the front page of

thismornings SF Chronicle. Of course, it featured a large color

photograph of the eclipsed moon shot directly over the Golden

Gate Bridge. The same spot I had planned to shoot from.

Argggghhh!

 

Anyway, anybody else try to photograph the eclipse last night?

Where did you go and what equipment did you use? Pleas post

pics if you got em!

[briany]

<i>I was alerted to this event on the Luminous-Landscape site, but have not seen any mention of it here at photonet.</i><br>

There have been a few<br>

<a href=http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0057TH> http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0057TH </a><br>

<a href=http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0057XL> http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0057XL </a><br>

plus several other more informative ones over the last week or so. I was really looking forward to photographing it, but clouds were all I saw. I hope the lumninous landscape trip had good weather.. when I checked earler in the week, that area was supposed to be cloudy too. I look forward to seeing some of the shots, yours included.

[brad_hiltbrand]

That second thread is hilarious. Thanks for the heads up. Sorry it

was a no show for you.

 

It was a lot less spectacular here than I had hoped because the

full totality portion of the eclipse happened while the moon was

still very low and penetrating a hazy sky full of light pollution and

the remains of twilight. I think the pictures from just after totality

ended are going to be the best. We shall see.

[Jerry_]

In NW Florida (CST zone); a f11 Reflex-Nikkor, a Nikon F5, a tripod, Fuji Superia 400 print film; it was 'clear' for the first 40 minutes or so, then a broken overcast took over. Maybe 14 frames exposed.

[ShunCheung]

The next lunar eclipse will be this November (2003) and then it'll be a year from now in May 2004. So there will be further opportunities in the not-too-distant future.

[greg s]

This is the one I happened to come across today at my latest web home (S2 forum :)... thought it turned out nicely.

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1020&message=5122380

[phule]

Actually, there was a thread started earlier than those two. Unfortunately, the thread is not archived so I can't point to it anymore.

 

Location:

Far northwest Chicago-suburbs looking southeast. The only location I can get to.

 

Equipment:

Elan7 (yay for mirror-lockup), Canon 400mm f/2.8 & Canon 2x Teleconverter == 800mm f/5.6

 

Film:

Kodak Portra 400UC (for no good reason other than I had it on hand)

 

 

This is my first attempt at photographing a celestial event other than some star trails. I rented the lens and teleconverter from Calumet Photo and arrived on-location (one of the few remaining corn fields in the Crystal Lake/Lake in The Hills area) at 9pm. We stayed until 11:30 when things got too wet with dew and we were too cold and tired. I've not yet processed the 3 rolls I shot because I'm not exactly certain where they should be done. Getting prints from the one pro lab I'm familiar with would cost me $20/roll...

 

 

Exposures:

I followed one of the various lunar eclipse guides I found on the web and shot from 500 at f/16 to 3 seconds at f/5.6. I did a lot of bracketing, as this was my first attempt.

[vegasllew]

I should have looked on the web for exposure info for the lunar eclipse which was unobstructed by clouds but the background light here in the Las Vegas Valley reduced a lot of the contrast. Between a slow (6.3) 400mm telephoto and 2X extender and ASA 100 film (what I had in the camera at the time) I got some large red "smears" resulting from the 30 second exposures the EOS gave me. Exposures bracketed as the moon began to come out of the Earth's shadow were considerably better (approaching the "sunny sixteen" effective for the moon when not in eclipse). Was so excited this morning that I got the one-hour photo at Sam's Club to whip the roll out. Combined disappointment and learning experience.

Not as bad as I did with the Persaides (sp?) meteor shower, but not what I had hoped.

[praveen murthy]

I wanted to do the *exact* same thing you wanted: drive up to Marin headlands and have the city background with the various phases of the eclipse in the sky. Then a realization struck: you can't make a good image of the moon and foreground without some sort of multi-exposure or double exposure anyway. So why not just shoot the eclipse, and then composit the image in the darkroom. That's what I plan to do. To shoot the eclipse, I went to quarry lakes park near my house in fremont, where a humorless park ranger told me to be out by 9pm. So I came back to my house, found that the bedroom window that looks east to mission peak had the best view I could hope for, and shot the eclipse on a 4x5 camera with about 12-14 shots as it arced across. Not at all original or creative but I will double up this negative with whatever other night shot I fancy later LOL, and oh the pain of having to shoot from a heated bedroom, while munching on snacks and watching TV! By far the most comfortable "outdoors" photography I have done yet.

 

Praveen

[bert_krages1]

A friend and I drove about two hundred miles from Portland, OR to the Painted Hills in eastern Oregon where, based on some calculations, I had figured out a viewpoint where the moon would rise directly above some of the nicest hills. It was overcast and rainy in Portland and raining hard at the pass on Mt. Hood but we made it with some time to spare. It turns out that another photographer from Portland and one from Port Angeles, WA had the same idea which made for some pleasant company. Anyway, there was a cloud bank directly behind the hills at moonrise so we were unable to get shots until about 40 minutes later when the foreground had darkened considerably. I bracketed shots on two rolls and we left around 10 PM. The rain at Mt Hood had turned into a blizzard on the return trip so I did not get home until 2:30 AM. Astrophotography in Oregon can be a risky business. If some of the shots turn out, I'll let you know.

[bert_krages1]

I was reasonably pleased given the trip.

 

<p><A HREF="http://www.krages.com/lunar.htm">Lunar Eclipse, Painted Hills, May 15, 2003.</A>.

[joe_boyd]

Fred Espenak <a href=http://www.mreclipse.com/LEphoto/LEphoto.html>(Mr. Eclipse)</a href> has an informative webpage on eclipse photography. The exposure guide is particularly useful. His hints on planning the image should be useful to anyone wanting to try, or try again.

[sliu]

I read about this Lunar Eclipse from a Leica thread:

<p>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0054Tn">

OT Lunar eclipse on the 15-16th North America and WEurope

</a>

<p>

I have an Astronomy program (Starry Night Pro) that can predict the position of moon

at any time observed from anywhere. I attached a screen shot of Starry Night to that

thread.

<p>

Incidentally I had a vacation plan to Block Island from May 15 to May 18, so it is very

natural for me to include this event in my vacation photography plan.

<p>

I have a Nikon digital Coolpix 800 and a Nikon F. I inculde my digital

shot here as an interesting animated gif image made of real digital image and

Starry Night simulation. The image is straight from camera, (f3.5, 7sec, ISO400). I

could have pulled out more stars if I adjust levels in photoshop, but I didn't. The

animated gif was made with photoshop and imagemagick.

<p>

Enjoy ;-)

[dave_werner]

Canon D30 (two 3 sec 200iso images stacked) 810mm f8 telescope on clock drive mount. Wisconsin USA<div></div>

[sliu]

For those of you who are interested in details, here is a larger file.

[brad_hiltbrand]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I look forward to seeing

more pictures. Praveen, I am very amused by your story.

 

I was using my normal slow film (Kodak E100SW) and my

exposures were long, too long to avoid motion blur of the moon

when examined closely. I was challenged by lack of a long lens,

lots of street lighting in my location, and the need to balance the

exposure of the eclipsed moon with the Hoover Tower in the

foreground. Most of my exposures were too short to get much

detail from the tower (anything less than 8 seconds at F6.9), and

without the tower, the moon is too small to be very interesting.

 

My third exposure (below) of the evening was just after totality

ended using an exposure of around 12 seconds at F6.9 (wide

open for this lens). Lens at maximum zoom was 90mm

(equivalent to about 55 mm in 35mm format). I cropped in by

about half in each direction, using only 24% of the original film

area (oh the joys of a medium format negative). Scanning was a

real challenge because of the limited tonal range of most of the

image. I did many different scans, finally using 8 multiple

passes to minimize noise and lots of prescan tweaking of

curves with Silverfast Ai scanning software. Then I cropped and

tweaked some more in Photoshop. I am reasonably happy with

the final result and did not have to blend multiple exposures to

get the desired effect.<div></div>

[sliu]

This is NOT a compostion. 11 exposures in 55 minutes. Two sets of exposure: 1/15 sec@f4.5 and 1 sec@f8.

<p>

<a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004k6V"> Nikon F + Vivitar 70-210 MC macro AIs zoom </a>(taped at 210mm). Provia 400F (normal development).<div></div>

[sliu]

<img src="http://www.photo.net/bboard/image.tcl?bboard_upload_id=12858784"><div></div>

[sliu]

I have a picture of the equipment we used.<div></div>

[ligia_dovale]

The pictures of the lunar eclipse shown above are fantastic. I have no experience whatsoever in eclipse photography, so I just tried some straight shots of the moon, here is one of them. And thanks for the information about how to do it, will try to be more creative the next time!

[brad_hiltbrand]

Subject: Response to Lunar Eclipse - Who photographed it,

where, and what equipment did you use?

S. Liu, very nice composition indeed. I think you meant that that

image was not a composite image made from several different

frames, but was made by a number of different exposures in the

same frame. I like it a lot. It is an interesting image and a nice

documentary of the eclipse.

 

I count this whole adventure as a great learning experience.

Longer lenses are definitely in order for this job. Trying to make

an interesting image or landscape out of this event was very

difficult. I should have used faster film, but I still would have had

trouble balancing the foreground and moon exposures in a

single frame. At least I would have had less trouble with motion

of the moon. Perhaps next time something like this happens I

will try something like S Liu has done, taking multiple exposures

over time to track the event across the sky. Unfortunately, my

current cmera of choice will not let me do multiple exposures in

the same frame (darn autowind!).

 

I hope we get to see some more photos soon. I am eager to see

how others approached this interesting challenge.

[phule]

It's been a week now, and I still don't have anything to show. I dropped my negatives off on Monday and only asked for processing and proof sheets. The pro lab (Lab One) didn't give me proof sheets because they didn't know how to cut the negatives. (Of course they didn't call me on Tuesday to tell me this, they just processed the rolls and left me wondering when I tried to pick everything up).

 

They didn't cut the negatives because there was no way to tell where the frame started and where it ended. I took a look at them yesterday and did agree that there was no way to tell, but I don't see why they couldn't just get a template (i.e. another set of 5 shots already cut) and just line it up. That's what I ended up convincing them to do.

 

So, by tomorrow I should have proof sheets and cut negatives to scan. There are some shots (to my untrained eye) that looked good on the negative so I can only hope for the best tomorrow. :)

[larry h.]

Rob & others, it is very helpful to the lab to expose the first frame in daylight so they know where to start. If need be, shine a flashlight directly into the lens and overexpose the first frame. Then, as you said, they can use other film strips or a ruler to cut the rest. Needless to say, going to a lab that has done this before is helpful.

[sliu]

Aha! now I understand why the lab reversed the order of my sides. I killed the last two frames

the next morning so they became slides #2 and #1.

[phule]

Larry,

 

Doh! That would have been a great idea.

 

As it stands, when I went back on Friday the negs were still not cut and the lab refuses to do so.

 

So I'm stuck with three long strips of 36-exposure negatives and no clue what to do with them...