Category Archives: photography

Seeing the world through my viewfinder.

photography

Lunar Eclipse

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times:

Always have an extra camera battery.

It would also help to remember to turn off your camera after the last use.

Fear not, though: the lunar eclipse photography attempt was not completely in vain. I got some good shots of the partial eclipse (I hope), and a couple good ones of the last sliver of moon before totality. Just as I was ready to take the last photo before the total eclipse, though—that was when my battery finally gave out.

So, no photos of the absolute total eclipse, but that’s no biggie. I’m wagering that my setup wasn’t quite equipped to take photos of totality, since my 2x extender cuts my aperture by 1/2 while it multiplies my focal length by two. Meaning, for the photo-savvy, that my teleconverted telephoto lens wide-open is about a 400mm f/8 lens. For the non-photo-savvy, all this means is that while my gadget makes faraway subjects bigger in the frame, less light can get to the film, making for less successful low-light photography. Like total lunar eclipses.

We’ll see, though. I’ll post photos as soon as I get them back from Dale, and we can discuss.