A Blood Wolf Super Moon was in view for vast swats of North America. Did I mention that it was cold? I wanted to set up the camera on a tripod but it was just a little bit too cold.
It was quite an interesting site, even in the suburbs. Fortunately, the moon was almost at its zenith, which made for obstruction free, frozen shooting. I don’t think I want to be in the Discovery Channel show about living above the arctic circle. Now, that antarctic winter adventure, however, that is still a dream (or nightmare).
How long did it take to capture these perfect pictures?
They’re far from perfect. I wanted to set up the camera on a tripod and do a complete set of eclipse pictures but one jolt of the air told me to leave the photography to people in warmer places (at least for last night). Each image is less than a second each. A full moon is basically like taking picture of something in broad daylight, so the first exposure was about 1/4000 of a second (I underexposed it). The blood moon was at a higher ISO (more grainy, but has higher light sensitivity). Even then the exposure was down to around 1/25 of a second. All this was handheld on my RX10IV. Which is one of those Sony all in ones. Basically, the exposure is like this:
Full moon, pre eclipse, some high clouds: 1/4000, f4, ISO 400
Red Blood Moon (really underexposed to be able to handhold): 1/25, f4, ISO 1600
And that’s why if you want to do astrophotography, you go to a place with the darkest sky and have the moon nowhere near the spot you want to take a picture of.