Lunar Eclipse - 8 Nov 2003

In advance of the Earth passing between the Sun and the Moon, we setup the tripod and camera in our backyard in Waterdown. I've never taken photos of an eclipse before, but I was aware that the exposure would be tricky. (especially as I got used to how much it changed from minute to minute) The thing to keep in mind is that the moon is significantly brighter than everything else in the sky, so auto-exposure is useless. I experimented with various exposure settings, but the camera didn't know what I was trying to accomplish, so I switched over to full manual (including focus) and worked from there.

Over the hour or two that made up the majority of the eclipse, we set our stove's timer to go off every 10 minutes, then we'd go outside, take a few photos, and return to the warm indoors, from 7:30pm to 10pm. We would leave the camera outside so it wasn't subjected to a series of sudden temperature transitions. It was a cool evening and the battery didn't take well to being outside in that environment, so we had to switch between two batteries a couple of times. (warming the alternate in my pocket)

Something I hadn't realized was how much the exposure would change from one minute to the next. Before I gave it any thought at all, I had naïvely assumed I could just fix the exposure and take all my pictures, with the idea that their relative light levels would be reflected in the resulting pictures. This might have worked on a magical camera with infinite sensitivity, but on mine it was not even close. The difference in exposures required a constant fiddling with settings. This is a little process I like to call "learning". For each photo you see here, I took 3-5 at various times and apertures, to give a group (manual "bracketing") where the hope is that one comes out the way you'd like. I'm happy with the results.

How to improve? With my current camera (Canon Powershot G2) I don't think I could very much. Maybe some different aperture/exposure settings may have resulted in sharper images. I think the next step would be to have a camera with a really big lens, or, best case, though a decent telescope. But for casual backyard photography, I'm happy with the outcome.

Technical:

The images you see here are at 100% size (these are not thumbnails). The moon takes up approximately 60x60 pixels in each image. Since my camera was exposing at 2272x1704 (using full 3x optical zoom), the moon was using 0.09% of my camera's sensor area. The first way to improve the photos would be to utilize more of the camera's sensor. How? Use a larger lens. Not significantly feasible with my camera. Longer exposures? Not really. Notice the blooming on the reddest shots. I was going for a long exposure to capture as much red as possible, but the tradeoff was an extremely bright crescent.

The exposures ranged from 1/100s @ f/8 for the second exposure (above), to 1.0s @ f/2.5 for the moon with the most visible red (2nd from the right, middle row). Since the distinct red glow is the main reason to watch lunar eclipses (in my book), I made sure to emphasize that colour, even if it meant sacrificing the exposure on the bright sliver.

The experience was a lot of fun. I've learned much, and I'd like to try my next lunar eclipse.