The Longhair and I decided to make a night of the Lunar Eclipse and popped down to The Island Seafood Grill at Pine Lodge for a bite before the event – Eisbein wiff nice mash for the Longhair (delish) and Peri Peri Baby Chicken for moi (a proper poussin which was good but still didn’t beat the Coconut and Lime poussin we grilled whilst moored in the marina at Rio de Janeiro).
Two Fanta Browns later and with camera, tripod and a small baby (Old Brown Sherry) tucked under our arms we slipped onto the beach opposite The Island Seafood Grill. Yes that same beach that your mother and everyone else warns you to stay away from.
I am the first to admit that my night time photography skills are severely limited so it was a testing time for me changing settings and just trying to make everything stand still during the exposure time.
We learned a couple of things; there is a lot of moisture in the air on a beach, the damn chokka boat lights are bright, sand is not a stable tripod platform, my damn lens is not long enough, I need a camera with higher ISO settings and faster shutter, but one or two of the 80 images taken of the lunar eclipse on the beautiful and deserted beach are passable – see below.
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Other Images of the Total Lunar Eclipse from Around the World:
Alan Straton
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The Firefly Photo Files also had a very nice sequence
Surely not faster shutter? You’d be needing a much slower shutter. In the old days of 35mm cameras, we used “bulb” for extra long exposure times.
My thought progression went like this: Longer Lens and Higher ISO need a Faster Shutter speed the closer you get to the light source.
Slower shutter speed I got.
In my experimentation the higher shutter speed gave me a clearer image (dropped the red and only gave the section of the moon that was illuminated). So, by my reckoning a longer lens and higher shutter speed would have been a good combination – remember that the focus point is on the lightest section of the moon and not the darkness surrounding it and that we want to see the mountains and shadows in the light section of the moon.