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Julie Hatvany | all galleries >> My Days, PaD >> Febuary 2008 PaD > Eclipse
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20-FEB-2008 Julie Hatvany

Eclipse

I thought I was going to freeze to death standing outside taking pictures of the eclipse. This was the best that I got. Anyone have any advice for shooting things at night? Believe it or not, I did use a tripod. I was very frustrated with my results.

Olympus E-500
2s f/6.3 at 449.0mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
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mart senior06-Mar-2008 23:03
fantastic
Patricia Lay-Dorsey23-Feb-2008 07:33
I love your soft focus. It feels more like what I saw than some of the more crisp images on PBase. The light is amazing!
J. Scott Coile22-Feb-2008 20:24
I think anything over about 4 seconds will show the motion of the celestial body. Anytime I get around 1/4 second or slower, I also use the mirror lockup function to avoid any in camera shake too. I have found most clear night lunar shots fall in the 400 ISO at about 1/13 second to 2 second range at f/2.8-f/4. Shoot away and experiment. The film is so cheap :-)
Dick Lowthian22-Feb-2008 12:59
I agree with Bill, Steve, and Dick. Longer exposures of it just don't turn out very sharp. I prefer to bump up the iso and deal with the noise. When the moon is bright there's no problem because that's like taking a daytime shot. But once it's eclipsed, that's no longer true. I always use a cable release and mirror lock up. Sometimes you can do everything right and atmospheric conditions (that you can't see with your eye) can still soften an image.
Richard Vance22-Feb-2008 11:19
Good effort with that very difficult photo task, Julie. It was cloudy here in East Tenn. and I only caught a few glimpses of it through the thinner clouds. Good tips from Bill and Steve. I might add to use Spot Meter instead of Matrix to avoid over-exposing the brightest areas.
Best regards,
Dick:)
Steve Thuman22-Feb-2008 05:47
The problem with eclipses such as this is it's not very bright and the moon is moving across the sky much quicker than you may think. A shutter speed of less than 1/30 sec will have some motion blur. Though you may not see it as a stretched image, it does make the image softer. You have to sort of balance ISO and shutter speed and f/stop. At ISO 800 your shutter speed would have been 1/4 second. Better, but not quite there. A faster lens (and therefore wider aperture, resulting in a faster shutter) would help. All in all though, you did well considering. The really really sharp shots you see of it are taken with a tracking telescope.
Guest 22-Feb-2008 04:39
Not bad Julie. It's tough doing this without the proper equipment. I didn't do much better myself. Take lots of shots, use a real steady tripod, increase the ISO to keep the shutter speed as short as possible, use mirror lock up and a remote release.
Bill Paige22-Feb-2008 04:37
Great shot
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