[Leica] Blood Moon Eclipse practice photo

[Howard Ritter]

Jayanand, Howard, and Douglas,

That is correct for a Moon illuminated by the full Sun, as it was when Howard shot it. At ISO 400 and f/8, the (1/ISO @ f/16) rule of thumb would call for an exposure of 1/800 or so, just as Howard shot it. Things change radically as the eclipse progresses.

Before the Moon enters totality, while it’s moving through the penumbra, illuminated by the partially eclipsed Sun, the correct exposure will decrease fairly rapidly, as any given point on the Moon will go from illuminated by the full Sun to entering the umbra in the space of just an hour. In fact, since the Moon’s diameter is almost exactly the same as the width of the penumbra, there wil be a moment, as the eastern limb of the Moon enters the umbra, when the illumination level varies across the Moon from full shadow to full sunlight.

At the middle of full eclipse, the level of illumination is quite low, coming from “all the sunsets in the world” as someone noted – the sunlight from the hidden Sun scattered by the Earth’s atmosphere. This is a tiny fraction of direct sunlight, so a reasonable starting point for f/8 would be 1 sec at ISO 6400. The position of the Moon within the umbra at mid-eclipse, as well as the degree to which the Earth’s atmosphere scatters sunlight can cause the brightness of the Moon at mid-eclipse to vary from eclipse to eclipse, from nearly invisible to rather prominent. So the above settings are just a starting point. The deep shadow is why you can’t hand-hold at mid-eclipse. It’s also why it’s difficult to capture both the sunlight and the shadow portions of the partially eclipsed Moon. Aggressive HDR or Photoshopping is necessary. The best results come from stacking a number of images spanning the full exposure range.

Nathan’s point about foreground elements adding interest is well taken. Here are several images I made of the “Blood Moon” eclipse four years ago. Mid-eclipse occurred when the Moon was quite low in the sky as seen from the eastern U.S., so these images capture foreground trees. In fact, they depict the whole range of distances from trees just tens of meters away, to the blue sky at tens of km, to the Moon at hundreds of thousands of km, to the planet Uranus (the blue-green dot to the left of the Moon) at hundreds of millions of km, to the stars at trillions of km.

Please view large!

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Blood+Moon/Mideclipse+in+Pisces+small.jpg.html <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Blood+Moon/Mideclipse+in+Pisces+small.jpg.html>

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Blood+Moon/Blood+Moon+Eclipse.jpg.html <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Blood+Moon/Blood+Moon+Eclipse.jpg.html>

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Blood+Moon/Mideclipse+1.jpg.html <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Blood+Moon/Mideclipse+1.jpg.html>

Unfortunately, mid-eclipse will happen with the Moon nearly overhead as seen from here, so no foreground this time unless I tromp through the snow to get under a tree in the back yard.


Have to go to Home Depot now. We just moved back to Ohio, and when we last departed we left our snow shovel behind. Eight inches fell yesterday, and I need to clear a space for my tripod…


—howard


> On 20Jan, 2019, at 0820, Jayanand Govindaraj via LUG <lug at leica-users.org> wrote:
> 
> Douglas,
> Whatever light you see will be reflected sunlight, only the area will vary,
> but the exposure should stay the same. The theoretical settings will be
> your sunny daylight rule, because you are photographing sunlight, at the
> end of the day, - you can tweak it a bit if you want! :-)
> 
> Cheers
> Jayanand
> 
> On Sun, Jan 20, 2019 at 6:42 PM Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:
> 
>> Nathan and Howard, it's not going to happen until 2029 again, so I think
>> I might make the effort as they think it's going to be clear here
>> between 5:15am and 5:45am - the period of maximum eclipse for us. The
>> position of it means all I have to do is throw open the glass doors, and
>> I can take a shot of it from inside the house with a pre-set up camera
>> and tripod before staggering back to bed. I presume Howard's settings
>> are no good for the actual shot as the light levels from the moon will
>> be lower.  Has anybody got an idea of settings at f8?
>> 
>> Douglas