# Red moon eclipse



## JustRob (Sep 28, 2015)

Three o'clock in the middle of the night, will it be? Take the camera to the bedroom, set the alarm, sleep.

Why's the alarm ringing? I'm retired! Oh, eclipse. My angel is already up looking for it. Good. Might be cloudy - no need to get up then. No chance - clear sky - shame. Got to do my thing then. Can I actually work this camera in the dark? It's a Canon EOS 600D. Buttons all over the place. How do I read the instruction manual in the dark? Have to wing it I suppose. We only want to prove that we saw it after all. Just a record shot then, nothing fancy. Need to use the 75-300mm zoom lens. How do I change the lenses in the dark? Should have done that before I went to bed. Ah, got it. Off we go. Full auto hasn't a clue. Switch to manual. Ah, here's the exposure control, I think. Nope, that's autofocus spot selector. This is the one then. Try every exposure under the sun, while the moon is still under the sun, that is. Getting something now. Long time coming, wasn't it?



1/4000th second. Really?


Oh, 1/2000th works just as well, but why's it darker?
​Almost full eclipse now. Very dim. Now the autofocus has given up. Have to switch that to manual as well. No idea why I kept it on anyway. New range of exposures needed. _Two seconds _with a 300mm lens hand held? Are you joking? Do you realise how hard my heart is beating, getting woken up in the middle of the night like this? I'm hardly sniper stock you know. May as well try, prove we stayed up for it. Will 1/50th do?





Okay, I know it's virtually gone now, but I'm not chancing more than 1/30th second.


​That's it then, back to bed. I'm sure someone else must have done better, but we did see it. The proof's here. Red moon indeed. Bah, humbug!


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## Gumby (Sep 28, 2015)

Oh, nice! Awesome, in fact!  I'm glad you hung in there and took the photo's.  I didn't get to go take a look, darn it! Hubby went to look, but said it was only dark, no red.


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## Blade (Sep 28, 2015)

Good try, it can be chalked up to experience.:eagerness: All I got was completely overcast, not even a shot at it.:upset:


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## Terry D (Sep 28, 2015)

Cloudy here too. First cloudy night in more than a week.

Here's a shot from an eclipse in 2008




And one from 2014.


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## JustRob (Sep 28, 2015)

Gumby said:


> Oh, nice! Awesome, in fact!  I'm glad you hung in there and took the photo's.  I didn't get to go take a look, darn it! Hubby went to look, but said it was only dark, no red.



Thanks. It definitely did look red to the eye to us. It was just that I wasn't able to capture that with the camera because of the exposure problem. The contrast range from the sunlit part to the shaded part was enormous as one would expect. As I said it wasn't a serious effort, just done to say that we didn't miss the opportunity entirely.


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## Mike C (Sep 29, 2015)

JustRob said:


> I'm sure someone else must have done better, but we did see it. The proof's here. Red moon indeed. Bah, humbug!



You did good!

I woke up at 3 but had had a shit day. I squinted at the window, thought "Fuck it, i'll see it on TV in the morning" and went back to sleep.


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