12/20/10 • 10:21 PM
Mom took this shot of me shooting the photos below —
her idea.
She did a great job hand-holding the 1.3 second exposure,
which was my fault.
I handed her the LX5, only conservatively increasing the ISO,
which is my style.
But I should have opened the aperture all the way up too,
utilizing its f/2.0 capability.
[For really observant camera buffs,
I’m not using the tripod collar because I loaned this lens to a friend
who doesn’t have a RRS quick release mount,
and I hadn’t screwed back on the adapter.
It wasn’t necessary, though.
Perhaps it was the extreme angle.
The 5D2 was rock steady
even with the extenders.]
12/20/10 • 10:00 PM
About 15 minutes into the lunar eclipse
12/20/10 • 10:41 PM
About an hour into the eclipse,
here it is nearly full.
We’re looking at the moon almost entirely shadowed by the Earth!
I had thought that the red color was mostly from the streetlight-lit clouds that rolled in,
but Rich commented below on how this is how it appeared even cloudless,
which I see is the case in these photos.
Perhaps even though the moon wasn’t throwing much light,
it was still reddening the clouds, along with the city’s light pollution,
which is generally more yellow/orange than red.
The clouds are a main reason for this photo’s lack of sharpness.
But this is also a much longer exposure,
as the moon is much darker,
so the movement of the moon blurs the photo even more.
I don’t have a motorized tracker gizmo
as Alaska isn’t a great place to view celestial bodies in the heavens,
being too low in elevation, among other things.
In hindsight, I probably could have totally avoided the clouds
shooting instead near Flattop Mountain —
getting an interesting landscape shot up there as well,
but the forecast was clouds,
so I was surprised to even see the moon at all.
And I didn’t know this would be such a long event,
taking over 2 hours —
much different than a solar eclipse.
Related:
Some did shoot the moon from Flattop’s base
Rich
Hey Jeff, How did I know you’d be outside last night playing!! 😉 Great photos by you and your mom. I heard that the red color was actually part of the eclipse and I forgot what all the technicalities of it where. I heard an expert on the radio talking about it.
On a different note…… how is the printing coming? : )
Merry Christmas to you and your Mom!!
Rich
Jeff Fenske
Thanks Rich,
I corrected the text above. The clouds were definitely that color, so I thought it was the clouds affecting the moon. The moon didn’t seem bright enough at that point to be reddening the clouds, but perhaps it was.
On the printing, I finally got the paper cutter, and I’m continuing to do much studying.
My goal is to hit ONEcanhappen hard during these next few days. I have a number of articles that I need to write and get out there. Then I can more fully concentrate on getting the area in the house cleared out (one of my least favorite things) to bring the printer in.
And I have to do more tweaking on the images too. It’s going to be fun; though, bittersweet.
Things don’t look good for America — which is why I’m trying to wrap up what needs to be done on my part to help bring the revival in.
Things are looking good in this respect. I’ll probably be making an announcement that I expect the Third Great Awakening to start in Anchorage in 2011.
If I’m right, we’ll have the best of times and the worst of times. But I’ll really be a happy man once this finally happens.
By the way, my webMASTER is back in touch with me. He thinks I’m making the photos too wide for the site, so the text on the right overlaps. I kept making them wider and wider during the “Cargo’s Last Stand Days” until I settled on a max width of 750.
I know this too wide for iPods and low res screens (especially when the print is blown up big), but from what I’ve seen, standard laptops, etc. seem to have plenty of real estate to make the browser window wide enough so there is no overlap.
I’m looking for ideas to make the site as viewable as possible. And I’ll have to put together a site for my business soon, which will be more important to having it look its best.
Jeff : )