The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Last night was not promising for good eclipse photography tonight, whilst it was beautofull all day it clouded over at sunset. GOOD for a sunset photo, but the moon was hidden and hazy. Setting my camera to all automatic was definitely BAD, even after i switched to MF (manual focus, to stop the lens processing backwards and forwards unable to make up its mind how tho focus, the light metter obviously got fooled by the strong contrast and the bright light flared out. The best I got at 8:35PM was still UGLY (I have better shoots of the detail on the moon, the haziness here is probably atmospheric moisture). I found switched back to manual and low ISO (200 is as low as I can get) with the fstop at f8 and 1/250, and a tripod! I'm expecting to have to change the length to maybe 5 minutes plus during totality

The MrEclipse web site, mentioned in the pre-quel post, scroll two posts down, is still the best reference with hints on photographing the lunar elcipse I have found. Its Table 3, an exposure guide may be very useful for those judging how to change manual settings during the eclipse