Total Eclipse!

Ten years ago when I first got into photography, i remember running home from soccer practice to make it to the photo lab to get super duper sensitive slide film to photograph the eclipse up on Mt. Diablo. The hardest part was waiting 2 days to get the images back from the lab to see if the shot even turned out!!! Well, I did nail it, and that was so long ago I think I lost the slide and the print. Either way, tonight brought me back. I worked until 1:30 and then got to tired, then woke up at 3:52am. When I ran outside, I first thought, “oh no, its behind the mountains”. Then running around the corner I came back and realized it was just super dim! Its crazy to see our moon like this. But here is how you take a picture of the next one in however many years.

Take a tripod, and take your camera, shutter release and a long lens, preferable something over 200mm. Mount the tripod onto the lens, and then go into your camera and select mirror-lockup. This way the first click will open the mirror, the second shutter click will fire the image, without the camera blur of the shutter moving up and down.

Then set your ISO to roughly 1600, and your shutter speed to 1/4th of a second. with an aperture or 5.6. The faster the lens the better, if you shoot too much longer the moon will move in the sky while the shutter is open or the moon will look tipsy and blurry. Those settings should right about nail it!