This page contains photos of the
"Christopher
Columbus" Lunar Eclipse
of February 20, 2008. It was my first
significant exercise in astronomical photography in over a decade, and
my first with a digital camera. The camera was a Canon S5 IS, which is
a super-zoom (12X) 'prosumer' camera with ISO capability up to 1600.
There was bit of a learning curve before I started getting decent
pictures, which is why there are no partial eclipse photos before the
total eclipse. The camera did not have some of the features that my old
film SLR has that makes it easier to do astromocial photography. In
particular, there is not screw-in for a cable release on the shutter
button. So even though the camera was mounted on a tripod, I had to
manually press the shutter release. This caused some vibration in the
camera and that brought some blur into the final product. In addition,
it was intermittently breezy, which might have introduced more
vibration. Why I didn't think of using the shutter timer, I don't know.
It was cold, and maybe I just didn't want to stand around an extra 10
seconds per shot (I took over 40 pictures). I took pitures at ISO 800
and 1600 for between 1 and 3
seconds. The ISO 800 pictures are nicer. Less grainy. I should have
tried 400 and pushed the exposure time a bit.
