Lunar Eclipse

A few months back the Northern Lights were viewable in our area. For one night only, they made an appearance. And I didn’t see them. The next morning when I read about the uncommon event and saw the photos, I vowed to not miss another opportunity like that. I promptly subscribed to an astronomy blog feed in the hope that I’d know about any events before they occur. I heard about the lunar eclipse on Saturday morning but the maps and info was a little difficult to interpret. I walked around looking for the moon when I woke up and just so happened to time it perfectly. It was a cold morning, but I managed to get outside with my camera to photograph the last lunar eclipse until 2014.

I’ve never really taken photos of this sort of thing before, and my camera is still fairly new to me. I fussed and fretted over ISO and f stop and framing of the scene. I moved around quite a bit which offered me a variety of scenes. I got some nice shots but in the end I wish I would have used two cameras. One with fixed settings and framing of the scene and taken at regular intervals. The other one to play with. I put together this animated gif (hence the low quality) of some of the photos.

I used my Tamron 70-300mm lens. The shots were never as crisp as I wanted but that lens is difficult anyway. But it did get these shots. I couldn’t have done them without a big zoom.

When I was standing out there at 6:30 am in the 13 degree weather, thinking about going back in for gloves, being glad I went ahead and put on my coat, I hardly had time to think about how special the experience was. Even though the photos aren’t perfect, I’m glad I did it.

3 Comments