Montana Eclipse - Dec 10, 2011

[Ralph Thornton]

What a great way to celebrate my birthday and number 65 at that. The total lunar eclipse came just before sunrise on the Rocky Mountain Front. I awoke at 5 and had breakfast. Then left the house with a thermos of coffee. Drove 14 miles west and another 6 to the south. I had scouted the location the previous day so even though it was dark I knew where I was going. There was no artificial light within my large field of view except for my flashlight which I kept off most of the time.

Set up camera and tripod with the help of the flashlight and was ready to shoot by 6:50. My goal was a landscape view of the moon in eclipse hanging low on the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana. The air was mostly clear, the temp was around 25 F and the wind was only maybe 10 mph. Still a little chilly but I was dressed warm.

Exposure of the primary image was ISO 400, f2.8 and I think the shutter speed was 4 seconds but can't remember exactly. I was using my 28-70 f2.8 L set at around 50mm. Will have to check the exif on my RAW file. The moon was shoot separately to get a better exposure and blended with the primary image.

 

[Ralph Thornton]

Shortly after the exposure in the previous post, maybe within 10 minutes, a few thin clouds came over the mountains and the moon faded from view. The sunrise on Ear Mountain, the mountain in my moon shot, was nice but not tremendously spectacular. I will note the location though because come March the sunrise will immediately illuminate both Ear Mountain and the nifty ledges in the foreground. I've already put some tentative shooting dates on my calendar. Hopefully my iPad alarm will remind me come the first of March.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Happy 65th Ralph!

What a lovely scene - and well worth all that planning and effort.

Love the 28-70 - that lens is a classic and still takes some beating.

 

[Kev Pugh]

Happy Birthday Ralph and a lovely image to celebrate it

 

[Pete Askew]

Happy birthday Ralph, and what a nice present you got!!

 

[Brian Moore]

Belated best wishes for you birthday, Ralph. Great shot!

 

[Hamish Gill]

Happy Birthday Buddy (belated, sorry )
Id love to see this image a little bigger!
the lighting looks lovely, very tranquil! It looks as though you have captured a tranquility really nicely!

 

[Ralph Thornton]

Thanks all for the birthday wishes.

Re, the photo. I processed this with Canon's DPP and then Photoshop. I reduced the image to 3,000 pixels on the long side and loaded it into my portfolio album on my iPad. The image looks great there IMHO. Then I used PhotoGene to reduce the size some and the resulting image looks pixelated. When I emailed it those that received the image saw a very poor image. Seems like there is something I might be missing in PhotoGene because I expected better results.

 

[Laurie Parker]

Lovely shot, fab looking scene and nice to see the eclipse within a scene rather than normal lunar styled shots.

Happy belated birthday to, hope you had a fab day

 

[Thomas brookes]

Happy belated Ralph and what a brilliant way to celebrate. Beautiful shot. Like Hamish I would love to see it bigger.

 

[Ralph Thornton]

When I was shooting this scene I took several photos of the moon at 200mm. The landscape shot is around 50mm.

Does anyone think having a larger nicely colored moon would enhance the photo? I'll put one together and upload it in larger size eventually. Pretty busy around here with the holidays coming though, so might take a few days.

 

[Hamish Gill]

id be interested to see that Ralph