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| Moon, mid-eclipse. 200mm lens, ISO 400, f4, 1s shutter speed |
Sorry, this is a little late to capture the lunar eclipse, but taking pictures of the full moon can still be fun even when its not being eclipsed.
Before I get started talking about exposure and lenses and such I wanted to explain someone that may not be obvious and understanding this will help you better understand how to take pictures of the moon. The moon, which you may know is being illuminated by direct light from the sun. And, the moon is essentially the same color as concrete. Basically, this means the moon is as bright as a sidewalk on sunny day. So don't be surprised that you may find that a proper exposure is going to be somewhere in the ballpark of ISO 400, f/16, at 1/250th.
Fun fact - the human eye/brain completely exaggerates the size of the moon and it is always disappointingly small in photos so you will want to use as long a lens as you can. 200-300mm for instance would be much more preferred.
You can shoot a time-lapse of the moon but it moved quite a bit in 30 seconds. Below you can see two images taken 30 seconds apart and see how much the moon has moved in that interval.
So you can shoot a time-lapse but the moon will move across the frame unless you use some sort of star tracking tripod - which I don't have... yet. It seems like I do more and more astrophotorgaphy so I may pony up a few hundred dollars to be able to do this.
Below is my off the cuff time lapse that I shot. Since the moon moves so much I had to adjust the camera every 30 minutes or so. Also, I had to adjust the exposure not only because of the eclipse but also because of cloud cover. That is why at times the moon seems to disappear is because I stepped away from the camera and clouds rolled in and obscured the moon. Also speed at which the moon moves is due to a change in interval timing. At first I was taking pics every 30 seconds, but toward the end I switched to 15 second intervals.
Enjoy!
