Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse
For the total lunar eclipse on May 26 2021 I thought I’d try out using the Hi-Res mode on my Olympus OM-D EM-1 MKII that moves the sensor numerous times and gives an 80mp image from the 20mp sensor. Pretty cool but is useless if anything in the scene moves, so keeping the shutter speed up was key to it working.
Test photo before the beginning of the eclipse using Hi-Res mode
Hi-Res vs Normal at 100%, so 80mp vs 20mp
Early in the day I was flicking through Facebook or Instagram and came across a post about the upcoming eclipse and that it would be possible to capture the milky way and the moon at totality as the moon was going to be close enough to easily fit into frame.
For most of the captures I was using the 40-150mm 2.8 whilst sitting on my driveway in a camping chair watching and snapping images during the phases with a rough idea of how I was going to put together the final composite image.
Keeping warm meant getting out of the chair and doing a few laps around the driveway to get the blood pumping. For me this was a pretty easy shoot as I did not need to go further than my driveway and could duck inside to get gear or food as needed and not miss anything! It was good thing too as I almost didn’t quickly duck inside to get my 12-40mm 2.8 to do the wider shot of the milky way that ended up being the bases of the final composite image. If I’d gone further than my driveway for the shoot I’m not sure I would have packed a wider lens and wouldn’t have ended up with the results I did.
Overall I snapped close to 70 images, most in the Hi-Res mode and I only ended up using eight of the images in the end showing roughly the same stages of the eclipse before and after totality. There were a lot that were too blurry to use either from camera shake (tapped the touch screen to hard - was using this instead of the shutter button to minimise shake), the Hi-Res mode or be simply bumping the tripod during an exposure (did it a few times).
The final composite using eight Hi-Res for the moon and one normal res for the milky way
Same seven moon images as used above but just using the background from the totality capture so there some stars around
Below is a selection of the separate images including a composite like the final composite above but with the moons much closer to scale based on the single exposure of the milky way captured at totality. There are also a few of the moon rising through some great clouds, a stuff up that I thought I’d keep and some crazy good astro photos taken on my Pixel 5 in astrophotography mode.
I was outside in the cold watching and capturing from just before the start until totality, then I came inside offloaded the captured images and ducked back out at intervals to capture the second half, stayed much warmer this way! :)