Lunar Eclipse
Our return to live in Lijiang, Yunnan has been timely, with the cold air and high altitude creating ideal viewing/shooting conditions for the lunar eclipse last night. There was the added bonus of being able to take my images from the balcony of our house, which lies to the north of town, and does not suffer from light pollution.
My Nikon D3x is away being repaired after its drowning on Bali, therefore I had to use the back-up body, the Nikon D7000. I used my Nikon 300/2.8 with a 1.7x multiplier on it, which resulted in a reasonable sized image.
As always with this type of photography, the key consideration is to take acceptably sharp images, and I used the following techniques to best effect.
1 – Sturdy tripod/ballhead
2 – Cable Release
3 – Mirror Lock-up
I was able to get sharp images of the fully eclipsed moon at shutter speeds down to 1/3s @ ISO 200 f8.
The resulting shot is a composite of 4 moon exposures, and another for the sky – the keen-eyed among you will notice that the sky is taken looking north rather than west, as the sky was darker, and I was able to get a better exposure looking in that direction.
Lunar Eclipse 10th Dec 2011
Lijiang, Yunnan, China
at 3:21 pm
Beautiful eclipse shot, Ali!
Hope you’re settling in nicely with Juanli in your new home…
at 8:51 am
Thanks mate. We’re in a rented place for the next few months while Allie decorates our house. Suits me, as I get to work while she does all that
at 10:11 pm
Gorgeous, Ali! Love this one. I have one of my own that I’ll post in the next few days. it looks pretty amateurish next to this…
at 11:48 pm
Ali,
Great stuff. Include it in your book….
Greg.
at 8:53 am
I may well do that
at 5:52 pm
Nice work!
at 2:26 pm
Very elegant and skillfull, as always.