Eclipse of the Moon

Dear Readers:

Any thoughts regarding photographing the eclipse of the moon tonight? An article
in Sky & Telescope advised against using exposures longer than a few seconds with a stationarily mounted 500 mm telephoto lens; who has any thoughts on this?
The same article gave a tremendous range of possible exposure times depending
on the depth of the shadow, so the only thing to do it seems is massive
bracketing. Since my telephoto lens is limited to f/8, I'm going to try to
push Fujicolor 1600 one stop to EI 3200; is this a bad idea?
Cheers, --travis

"Travis Porco" wrote in message
...
Dear Readers:

Any thoughts regarding photographing the eclipse of the moon tonight? An
article
in Sky & Telescope advised against using exposures longer than a few
seconds with a stationarily mounted 500 mm telephoto lens; who has any
thoughts on this?

Anything longer than 1 second (with a 500-mm lens) will show some trailing
as the moon moves across the sky. It probably won't be objectionable unless
you go beyond about 3 seconds.

The same article gave a tremendous range of possible exposure times
depending
on the depth of the shadow, so the only thing to do it seems is massive
bracketing.

Right. You may be able to classify it as a light or dark eclipse after
totality begins. Exposure calculator at
www.covingtoninnovations.com/astromenu.html.

Since my telephoto lens is limited to f/8, I'm going to try to
push Fujicolor 1600 one stop to EI 3200; is this a bad idea?

Haven't tried that film. Of course, a grainy picture is better than no
picture at all!


--
Clear skies,

Michael A. Covington
Author, Astrophotography for the Amateur
www.covingtoninnovations.com/astromenu.html

Travis Porco wrote:
Dear Readers:

Any thoughts regarding photographing the eclipse of the moon tonight? An article
in Sky & Telescope advised against using exposures longer than a few seconds with a stationarily mounted 500 mm telephoto lens; who has any thoughts on this?
The same article gave a tremendous range of possible exposure times depending
on the depth of the shadow, so the only thing to do it seems is massive
bracketing. Since my telephoto lens is limited to f/8, I'm going to try to
push Fujicolor 1600 one stop to EI 3200; is this a bad idea?
Cheers, --travis

It is probably too late, but:

1.) The moon occupies about 1/2 degree in the sky.

2.)The moon (and almost everything else) moves 15 degrees an hour.
So you can figure an exposure of 1/30 hour will make a thing twice as long
as it is wide (assuming a square moon). So two minutes exposure is surely
too long.

3.) The moon reflects about 250 cd/ft^2, so your exposure might as well be
1/250 second using an aperture equal to the square root of your film
speed, or equivalent.

Say your film speed is ASA64. Square root of that is 8, so an exposure of
1/250 at f/8 would work. You need not stop down anymore because how much
depth of field could you need with something a quarter million miles away?
And opening it up should not be necessary because you should not need more
shutter speed.


--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 21:55:00 up 4 days, 23:47, 3 users, load average: 2.16, 2.24, 2.12

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 21:03:46 -0000, (Travis
Porco) wrote:

Dear Readers:

Any thoughts regarding photographing the eclipse of the moon tonight? An article
in Sky & Telescope advised against using exposures longer than a few seconds with a stationarily mounted 500 mm telephoto lens; who has any thoughts on this?
The same article gave a tremendous range of possible exposure times depending
on the depth of the shadow, so the only thing to do it seems is massive
bracketing. Since my telephoto lens is limited to f/8, I'm going to try to
push Fujicolor 1600 one stop to EI 3200; is this a bad idea?
Cheers, --travis

When I was on a film shoot, we had to get a closeup of a Moon that was
nearly full; say 85%. The film we were using was 7254, rated at 100
and shot at 24 fps, which gave us 1/48 ofr a second. Since we only
needed about 6 seconds, maximum, we just shot 10 second takes at every
aperture, from f-2.2 through f-22. The best was between f-8 and f-11
I forgot this when I shot a partial eclipse with a still camera some
years later. I followed advice from a camera magazine and wound up
about 3 stops over on slide film.

Don't forget that the Moon is a Sunlit object. The MP shots were done
with a daylight filter, so the effective film speed was 64. Since we
were using an Angenieux 12-120 at mavimum telephoto on 16mm, we got
great big framing of a Moon who's surface was fully detailed and
showed texture..

Watch out for overexposure, even with negative film.

Robert Vervoordt, MFA

"Jean-David Beyer" wrote in message
...

3.) The moon reflects about 250 cd/ft^2, so your exposure might as well be
1/250 second using an aperture equal to the square root of your film
speed, or equivalent.

Say your film speed is ASA64. Square root of that is 8, so an exposure of
1/250 at f/8 would work. You need not stop down anymore because how much
depth of field could you need with something a quarter million miles away?
And opening it up should not be necessary because you should not need more
shutter speed.

Impressively accurate! But those calculations, alas, are for the uneclipsed
moon...

With a digital camera set to ISO 200, my exposures at f/10 were about 1/125
during penumbral phases, up to 2 seconds during the outer part of totality.
I'm not trying to photograph deep totality.
See: www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog (October 27 entry).

I'm doing very similar film photos, but of course they aren't developed yet
A digital camera makes an excellent exposure meter for difficult
subjects.

Clear skies,
Michael

Travis Porco wrote:
Dear Readers:

Any thoughts regarding photographing the eclipse of the moon tonight? An article
in Sky & Telescope advised against using exposures longer than a few seconds with a stationarily mounted 500 mm telephoto lens; who has any thoughts on this?
The same article gave a tremendous range of possible exposure times depending
on the depth of the shadow, so the only thing to do it seems is massive
bracketing. Since my telephoto lens is limited to f/8, I'm going to try to
push Fujicolor 1600 one stop to EI 3200; is this a bad idea?

S & T is a group of astronomers, not astro-photographers......

One thing to remember, the moon is a fairly light coloured object, lit
directly by the sun, so often the best exposures are the same as for any
other sun-lit object. It's not uncommon to, with 200ASA film, to use a
shutter speed of 1/250th @ f/16 and get a pretty good shot. With the
eclipse, your looking at an object in shadow, it should be darker then
the same object when fully lit, so maybe add 1 or 2 stops, be careful
though, it's easy to way over-expose it.

With a lunar eclipse, the last thing you want to do is severally
overexpose it, or you will simply wash it out and lose the effect of the
eclipse, you want it darker then normal, but not so dark that you lose
the detail.

If you take (took)a whole roll, warn your lab, they will go nuts trying
to compensate for printing, and often you get a washed out moon on a
medium gray background......

W

"The Wogster" wrote in message
...

One thing to remember, the moon is a fairly light coloured object, lit
directly by the sun, so often the best exposures are the same as for any
other sun-lit object. It's not uncommon to, with 200ASA film, to use a
shutter speed of 1/250th @ f/16 and get a pretty good shot. With the
eclipse, your looking at an object in shadow, it should be darker then the
same object when fully lit, so maybe add 1 or 2 stops, be careful though,
it's easy to way over-expose it.

With a lunar eclipse, the last thing you want to do is severally
overexpose it, or you will simply wash it out and lose the effect of the
eclipse, you want it darker then normal, but not so dark that you lose the
detail.

But remember the penumbra! No part of the partially eclipsed moon is as
bright as the normal full moon.

If you take (took)a whole roll, warn your lab, they will go nuts trying to
compensate for printing, and often you get a washed out moon on a medium
gray background......

Yes, they need to know that the background is black.

Well, now that it's past, I hope you got some decent shots. I tried it
with my Hasselblad using provia 100f and a 150mm f4 lens. Last time I
took pictures was with a Rolleiflex 2.8F (80mm) using the same film
and exposures of about 10-15 seconds. The results were great. Not
perfect as some celestial movement did occur during the exposure. What
really made them neat was the path of the airplanes flying though the
frame so I have a few slides of the eclipse, as well as the red and
white lights from the planes. Oh, and the stars too.. One thing to
remember when shooting the moon is what it's reflecting.. The sun. The
eclipse, of course, is the earth blocking the light path from the sun
to the moon. If it's something you'd want to play with more, there are
all kinds of tracking devices that can be built to follow the paths of
your subjects..

8) Jeff


(Travis Porco) wrote in message ...
Dear Readers:

Any thoughts regarding photographing the eclipse of the moon tonight? An article
in Sky & Telescope advised against using exposures longer than a few seconds with a stationarily mounted 500 mm telephoto lens; who has any thoughts on this?
The same article gave a tremendous range of possible exposure times depending
on the depth of the shadow, so the only thing to do it seems is massive
bracketing. Since my telephoto lens is limited to f/8, I'm going to try to
push Fujicolor 1600 one stop to EI 3200; is this a bad idea?
Cheers, --travis

"Jean-David Beyer" wrote in message

3.) The moon reflects about 250 cd/ft^2, so your exposure might as well be
1/250 second using an aperture equal to the square root of your film
speed, or equivalent.

Does this 1/(cd/sqft)seconds @ f-sqrt(ASA) produce an 18% grey?

It does produce a 'sunny 16' exposure for the moon.

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com

In article ,
Michael A. Covington wrote:

"Travis Porco" wrote in message
...
Dear Readers:

Any thoughts regarding photographing the eclipse of the moon tonight? An
article
in Sky & Telescope advised against using exposures longer than a few
seconds with a stationarily mounted 500 mm telephoto lens; who has any
thoughts on this?

Anything longer than 1 second (with a 500-mm lens) will show some trailing
as the moon moves across the sky. It probably won't be objectionable unless
you go beyond about 3 seconds.

The same article gave a tremendous range of possible exposure times
depending
on the depth of the shadow, so the only thing to do it seems is massive
bracketing.

Right. You may be able to classify it as a light or dark eclipse after
totality begins. Exposure calculator at
www.covingtoninnovations.com/astromenu.html.

Since my telephoto lens is limited to f/8, I'm going to try to
push Fujicolor 1600 one stop to EI 3200; is this a bad idea?

Haven't tried that film. Of course, a grainy picture is better than no
picture at all!

Thanks for your thoughts and to everyone else who responded.

cheers, --travis