Lunar Eclipse

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I’m not an astrophotographer by any stretch, but when some events happen in our night skies, I do my best. I was late getting things together and didn’t have a chance to drive away from the city lights, so I did the next best thing: I set up a tripod out on our street and hoped I didn’t get run over. This photograph of the May 2022 Lunar Eclipse was taken with my Canon 7D2 attached to the original Canon 400/2.8L. I stabilized everything with my Benro Mach 3 aluminum tripod topped with a Movo Double Gimbal tripod head. I have really liked this setup to support the 7D+400 when I was out photographing birds this spring when I wasn’t going handheld. I swapped out my 400’s foot for an Arca type that works perfectly with the quick mount plate supplied on the Movo gimbal.

It has been years since I’ve photographed a lunar eclipse and started off with the standard moon photography formula of ISO 200 / 250 / f11 and began working from those numbers. I was losing out on some of the surrounding stars and wanted to try balancing the exposure of this darker moon and ended up settling on ISO 3200 / 0.5 / f8

I shot off about 10 or 11 frames and decided I had a shot worth processing and brought them into Lightroom where I dialed this one in. I’ve already got the next lunar eclipse (March 14, 2025 - thanks Time & Date) on my calendar.