Lunar eclipse 2011
The conditions were perfect for shooting the eclipse, a clear night, full moon and a total eclipse, not to mention that it was at a reasonable hour and not at three in the morning. There were a few technical aspects to take care of. First the focal length, I had a look at the moon with a 600mm lens and pretty soon decided to double that up to a 1200mm, that looked better, but it produced its own set of issues. Movement was one of those issues, and with a slow shutter speed it was critical, so I deployed another tri-pod with a bean bag on top and used that to support the front of the lens. The contrast between the bright moon and the black sky was also an issue. I wanted to try and retain a bit of the glow behind, where the shadow had already passed over. Shooting a slower speed to try and capture this glow only did two things, the slowly moving moon at that magnification, was soft and the brighter side of the moon was totally blown out, all I could do was wait until there was a bit more uniform light over the moon and play around with shutter speeds to find out just what speed was enough to freeze the moon AND get enough detail in the glow........
