eclipse
I successfully dragged my ass out of bed early enough this morning to catch the lunar eclipse. I drove to percy warner park, which as it turns out was probably entirely unnecessary, as the light pollution from Belle Meade Boulevard is worse than I expected, and I was too lazy to drive into the park itself. I should have gone to Vandy’s observatory. Anyone know if they are open for these sorts of things? I assume they are..
As you can probably tell, I don’t have a very long lens (it’s all in how you use it, right?), so the results aren’t great. Photographing an eclipse is interesting. It starts off easy enough, as basic moon photography, which is an exercise in stopping down and taking a quick enough exposure, since the moon is pretty damn bright. Then the light goes away, and it gets harder. It becomes an exercise in getting enough light while balancing that with the fact that, well, the moon moves. I found ISO 400 to be a decent sweet-spot to get me enough sensitivity, but even that required 1-4s of exposure, depending on how I stopped down the lens, and sharpness suffered over that time due to movement of the moon itself. Noise was evident at ISO 400, too.
Suggestions for what to do next time? (other than: get a lens longer than 85mm)
yah – I have a 200 you could have used. but it looks to me like you did just fine with what you had.
[...] be up to see it or I wouldn’t. I wasn’t. Fortunately, Sharon Cobb, Blake Wylie, and Chris Wage were up and took pictures. Go see for yourself. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social [...]
Totally cool picture!!!
I basically have the same problem with taking street photos at night. I don’t have a telephoto, just the 50 which is a short prime best used for close-up portraits. That makes me kind of an atypical street photographer because I can’t sneak up on people from fifty yards back and snap the photo. I have to get all up in their face with the camera. One thing to try: can you get all up in the moon’s face with your camera?
I also don’t use a flash, which means that sometimes, like in the photo punk girl on the telephone, I’m shooting at ISO 1600, f2.2, 1/80 s, and the noise is as prominent as the subject herself. ¡Viva digital noise!
In your case, the photo itself looks fine as far as the settings go. You just need to get in closer. What about Canon’s lovely L range of zooms? Heck, why not just go straight for the 500mm? There are plenty of truckstops outside of Nashville where you can whore yourself out for a couple of months.
Dang it, my wife and I got up for it but didn’t see anything. I think we got some bad info on when it was supposed to happen.