Photographing a Lunar Eclipse

As far as eclipses go, lunar is the minor leagues in difficulty. But what it lacks in difficulty it makes up for in beauty. The beauty of a lunar eclipse, to me, isn’t when the full eclipse occurs. It is all of the phases preceding the big event. Of course, I might be the itsy bitsiest bit biased, because I’m a night person and I have a natural affinity for the moon.

Where was I? Oh yes, there are several ways you can get your image(s) of a lunar eclipse. You can use a film camera (although, I’m not so good at it) or you can use a ‘regular’ digital camera or an SLR digital camera. As for methods, you can use a wide angle, multiple exposure, or telephoto. Obviously a post isn’t enough room to get into the pros and cons of all the options, but if you are interested in learning more you can check them out.

No matter what you use you are probably going to want to do some digital editing. The one time I tried this I had lots of images and I ended up putting them all together for one larger composite image. It turned out pretty cool but it did take lots of saving and deleting to get it. So, while getting the raw data to create your perfect image may not consume tons of disk space, for me, editing it all together certainly did. I suppose, I’m just going to have to accept the fact that my love with photography has the natural consequence of fragmenting my hard drive. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again, but defragmentation is a small price to pay for the addiction.

Photo Credit foxypar4

June 17th, 2009 by birdievogel | Posted in Astrophotography | (0)