[Just1MoreDave]

Total Lunar Eclipse on May 26, 2021 ? Where and When to See

This one is mostly for Australia, east Asia and western Americas. Unfortunately Europe and Africa are out. The weather's supposed to be good, we'll see if I can wake up for it.

[MarkJerling]

With my luck, we'll have full cloud cover - again.

[photoaki]

I’m in the eastern US, so won’t be seeing much (or any) of it.
But for the lucky ones, what’s the best setup?
K-1 and DA*300 + the 1.4x TC? Or, maybe a faster lens?

[AstroDave]

Remember "Looney 11" or maybe better, "Looney 8" for pictures of the Moon. The part in the eclipse shadow will be darker, and if you are seeing totality, it might be a lot darker.

Lots of bracketing recommended! But, a lunar eclipse is a lot more leisurely than the totality part of a solar eclipse, so take your time and have fun.

And, here's the eclipse "bible" web page: https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/LEplot/LEplot2001/LE2021May26T.pdf Note that the moon will be just barely totally eclipsed (i.e. within the umbra of the Earth's shadow), so it probably won't be too-o-o-o faint.

[Paul the Sunman]

14 minutes of totality here in Melbourne.

[Just1MoreDave]

I’m in the eastern US, so won’t be seeing much (or any) of it.
But for the lucky ones, what’s the best setup?
K-1 and DA*300 + the 1.4x TC? Or, maybe a faster lens?

A total lunar eclipse is supposed to be visible every 2.5 years average at any given location, not as rare as solar eclipses. You'll get a chance eventually.

The main problem is the eclipsed moon is pretty dim, and the moon moves fast enough to make long shutter speeds impractical. If you have haze it gets worse. A long fast sharp lens is nice but can get expensive. I have set up all my cameras to experiment with different focal lengths. Your instinct is to go long but shorter focal lengths can show stars, trees or other context in the frame. I usually end up pushing ISO well past the useful numbers but the newer cameras should be good there.

[Billking]

I’m in the eastern US, so won’t be seeing much (or any) of it.
But for the lucky ones, what’s the best setup?
K-1 and DA*300 + the 1.4x TC? Or, maybe a faster lens?

That's the set up I use for lunar pics. The K3iii would be awesome but the K1 is the bestest all round body there is - and I mean any brand. There is no camera I would swap it for.

[Billking]

14 minutes of totality here in Melbourne.

Forecast is for cloudy with showers. : (

As the saying goes, if you don't like the weather in Melbourne, just wait half an hour. The only problem is you can rely on it to be peeing it down right through the 14 minutes of totality.

[GLM]

Thanks for the heads up. Will be interesting to try to capture it.

[Roadboat24]

I'm in Arizona. I'm going with the K1 + 70-200 + 1.4x. put it all on a gimballed tripod. Never done anything like this, so fingers cross. Going out today to scope locations.

[MossyRocks]

But for the lucky ones, what’s the best setup?
K-1 and DA*300 + the 1.4x TC? Or, maybe a faster lens?

As long as you can go and as fast as you can go. I shot the last one visible in my area with my Sigma 300/4 APO Tele Macro. I did stack a bunch of shots and managed to pull this out and I recorded my settings there. That was my first time shooting an eclipse so it was a learning experience. At .5s one is getting towards the upper end of exposure length for a 300mm. The next time one happens near me I would probably use ISO 1600 or 2500 and .6s with that 300mm but would still stack things. However the next time one happens I will have a big equatorial and will be running my 800mm f/5.6 setup so I should be able to do great 30s shots.

If you want to try something see if you can use and intervalometer+astrotracer to get some reasonably good tracked exposure for a few seconds.

When shooting the moon or anything in the night sky you are not stopping down to increase the depth of field but instead stop down to clean up chromatic aberrations and other optical defects. Given that my suggestion is to practice manually getting proper infinity focus (autofocus doesn't get it right), learn how to operate your camera in the dark.

[Just1MoreDave]

... Given that my suggestion is to practice manually getting proper infinity focus (autofocus doesn't get it right), learn how to operate your camera in the dark.

I forgot about focus but that's a good tip. In totality, the moon is dark enough so any focus method is difficult. I usually use magnified live view and manual focus.

[DeadJohn]

Consider bracketing while you're taking photos so you can review and pick later. The moon will be unevenly illuminated as the eclipse proceeds, plus exposure settings can change from minute to minute, so it's easy to overexpose or underexpose part of the moon.


I took this one a few years ago using in-camera HDR on a Pentax K-5. I was surprised it worked this well, but I did have the camera on a tracking mount to compensate for movement between frames.

[DeadJohn]

In totality, the moon is dark enough so any focus method is difficult. I usually use magnified live view and manual focus.

I usually look for a bright star near the moon then recompose. Focus until the star is as small as you can get it. It's easier to judge focus with a pinpoint than it is to assess the lunar surface.

[MossyRocks]

I usually use magnified live view and manual focus.

When focusing to infinity for things in the night sky I find the best way, if one does not have a focusing aid, is to to use magnified live view with a bright star in the frame. The method that I have found works best is:
1. Turn off focus peaking
2. Get a bright star in the frame
3. Get the bright star as small as you can in the frame. During this you may notice that there are some spots that consistently flicker take note of those
4. Once you think you have the bright star as small as you can get it no look for one of those spots that consistently flickers and carefully adjust the focus until you can get it to turn on all the time.

Once you get one of those flickering spots to turn on you have now gotten about as perfect of an infinity focus as you can. This is because a lot of the time those flickering spots are dimmer stars and if your focus is off they don't consistantly illuminate a pixel but when perfect focus is achieved they do. At this point all you have to do is recompose on the actual object you want to photograph.