How to Photograph the Lunar Eclipse: Bracketed Timelapse Method

Table of Contents

Part I: The Shoot

1. Introduction
2. The Science Behind a Lunar Eclipse
3. Can I See the Eclipse?
4. Preparation and Planning
5. Equipment and Setup
6. Camera Settings
   1. Wide Angle Composition
   2. Telephoto Composition
   3. Shutter Speed
   4. Aperture
   5. ISO
   6. Exposure Bracketing
   7. Focus
   8. General Notes
   9. Example Settings
7. Timelapse Settings
8. Record a Video
9. Summary

Introduction

This article will explain not only how to photograph the moon as it moves through one of the most incredible celestial events we can witness from earth, but also how to capture that event over its entire duration by way of timelapse photography.

I found it difficult to get information on how both how photograph the lunar eclipse and how to process the data afterwards. I did not use a star tracker for my first attempt, but used one for my second and third attempts. (a piece of equipment that rotates with the earth, so a celestial object appears to remain stationary in the camera frame), which provided another level of difficulty to the post-processing of the lunar eclipse photos.

I hope that my experience can help others who are interested in capturing the next lunar eclipse.

I have been fascinated with the moon since I was a young child. Watching the moon move through its various phases each night was a form of magic to me. How could such a large object go through such drastic changes over the course of a month?

When I learned about eclipses, my mind was blown anew. I wanted to experience this fantastic phenomenon myself. It wasn’t until November 19, 2021 that I had the rare opportunity to witness the longest partial lunar eclipse in 1200 years from my balcony in Toronto.

I knew that this was my moment to not only witness an event that had been on my bucket list since I was a child, but also to use my knowledge of timelapse photography to do my best to capture the event so that others could also experience the magic without having to travel and stay up until 6 am.

I have spent the last three years honing my skills with timelapse photography. I take timelapses of the Milky Way, sunsets, moonrises, and any other event with long term movement that catches my eye.

The Science Behind a Lunar Eclipse

Understanding what causes a lunar eclipse can actually help with understanding how to photograph the moon as it moves through the various stages of the eclipse. Here’s a short video from NASA explaining why we experience lunar eclipses:

TLDW; the moon, on rare occasion, will pass through the shadow of the earth, known as the umbra. Typically, the full moon reflects a massive amount of light onto the earth. However, during a lunar eclipse, the moon passes through the umbra, which blocks most of the sun’s light, except for the light that passes through the earth’s atmosphere. This refracted light has an orange/red colour, which causes the moon to turn a dull red colour during totality.

The moon moves through various phases in a lunar eclipse:

1. Penumbral
2. Umbral
3. Totality

The moon will begin to darken, almost imperceptibly, during the penumbral phase until the edge of the moon hits the umbra. At this point, during the umbral phrase, it will begin to look like the earth’s shadow is eating the edge of the moon. As the moon moves deeper into the umbra, more and more of the moon will disappear, until totality is reached: when the moon is completely eclipsed.

The lunar eclipse in the evening of May 15, 2022 to the morning of May 16, 2022 will be in totality for around an hour and a half, as shown in the image below. The full eclipse (not including the penumbral portion) will take around 3.5 hours.

The length of the totality depends on the moon’s passage through the umbra. For example, on November 19, 2021, the moon was only partially eclipsed (98%). This partial eclipse occurred because not all of the moon passed through the umbra. A small sliver remained outside, never experiencing the full weight of the umbra.

As you can imagine, the difference in light from the full moon (the brightest object in the night sky) and the totally eclipsed moon is massive. From my experience, I went from shooting the full moon at 1/500 seconds to 3.6 seconds in order to properly expose the moon. That’s over 10 full stops of light.

Can I See The Eclipse?

Unfortunately, whether you can see the lunar eclipse depends entirely on your location in the world at the time the moon begins moving into the umbra.

This video shows the phase of the lunar eclipse and where/when it will be visible across the world for the May 15, 2022 eclipse.

In Toronto (and Ontario generally), the lunar eclipse will begin at 10:28 pm on May 15, 2022 and will end at 12:54 am on May 16, 2022. The west coast of Canada will not be able to see the entire eclipse, as it will begin at 7:28 pm PST, when the moon is still below the horizon.

(Update November 6, 2022): The total lunar eclipse of November 8, 2022 will occur at a later time than previous eclipses. In the EST time zone, it will not begin until around 4 am. The date, time, and location of the upcoming lunar eclipse may be found here: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2022-november-8

Preparation and Planning

Why is all of this background information necessary to photograph the eclipse? An eclipse can be a very long event (this upcoming eclipse will take around 3.5 hours), so planning is essential.

Additionally, understanding how much light is lost when the moon moves through totality can help a photographer select the proper settings throughout the eclipse to more fully capture the details of the moon. In my experience, being flexible with my camera settings was very helpful when conditions were different than I expected. When I photographed the eclipse in November, there were many clouds obstructing the moon for a large portion of the eclipse. I had to modify my settings from what I had originally planned in order to ensure that the moon was sufficiently exposed.

I use the Photopills app to plan my shoot. Any augmented reality (AR) app can be used to identify where the moon will be in the night sky when the lunar eclipse occurs.

I made sure to calibrate the app a few days before using the sun and moon, so that I could plan an unobstructed view of the lunar eclipse. Luckily, I had a view from my balcony that would only begin to obstruct the moon right at the very end of the eclipse. If you watched my timelapse video above, you can actually see the moon set behind a nearby building.

Depending on where you are in the world, be sure to check the weather ahead of time so that you can bring the proper gear (lens warmer, warm clothes, boots, etc.).

If the weather doesn’t look good the day before your shoot, you could try to plan a back up location that tends to have different weather from your ideal location. Sometimes driving an hour or so can make a huge difference in whether the lunar eclipse will be visible or clouded over. That being said, I started my shoot with the moon in full cloud cover and I’m glad I did; right as the lunar eclipse reached totality, the clouds cleared up and I managed to get unobstructed shots for the rest of the eclipse. It’s almost always worth trying to shoot even if the weather doesn’t seem like it is going to cooperate.

Equipment and Setup

The equipment used to shoot the lunar eclipse will vary depending on the type of shot you are going for. Some photographers will use trackers and others will shoot untracked.

Essential Equipment:

1. Fully-charged batteries (plural).
2. Empty memory card
3. Tripod and weight
4. Camera
5. Lens
6. Intervalometer (if taking a timelapse)
7. Optional: star tracker (Skywatcher Star Adventurer Pro 2i) for longer exposures. Note that you will also want the equatorial mount and the counterweight kit for telephoto shooting.

More details on my equipment can be found here.

If shooting a timelapse, consider how many shots you are going to take and if your memory card can handle it. I shot around 6000 photos in November. In hindsight, this was more than I needed, but I’m glad I didn’t have to worry about my memory card filling up mid-shoot. Similarly, I had fully charged batteries in case I needed to change mid-shoot. Keep in mind if you switch batteries, you will likely need to refocus your shot since some cameras rely on the battery to maintain the focus of the lens.

A tripod is essential for taking sharp photos of the moon. Weighing the tripod down can help stabilize the tripod and prevent shake if wind occurs.

The camera you use should be the best camera you have available, preferably, a camera with good low light performance. I used my Sony A7iii, in part because it is ISO invariant so I could shoot at lower ISO and faster shutter speeds with little to no impact on noise performance. If you would like to learn more about ISO invariance, Alyn Wallace has a great post).

Next, consider which lens you want to use and what focal length you would like to shoot at. Your focal length options will likely be dictated by where you are in the world. If you are in an area where the eclipse occurs close to sunrise or sunset, the moon will be close enough to the horizon to give you the option of a wide angle shot.

A wide angle shot of the lunar eclipse can make for an interesting composition. The moon moves a large distance over the course of the lunar eclipse, tracing a multi-coloured path through the night sky.

Alternatively, you could shoot as close as possible with a telephoto lens. The timelapse video and photos I posted above were shot on a Sony 100-400 with a 1.4x teleconverter, or an effective focal length of 560 mm.

An intervalometer is a device that allows you to automatically release the shutter of your camera. You can, for example, set the interval at 7 seconds and the intervalometer will automatically take a photo every 7 seconds. Some cameras have built-in intervalometers. If you don’t have one in your camera, you can use an external intervalometer that plugs into your camera or an app such as Shutter that connects wirelessly to your camera.

A star tracker is not necessary to shoot the moon, though it would make it a lot easier to do so. When shooting the moon without a star tracker, it will move across the frame, requiring you to change the position of your camera on a regular basis to keep the moon in frame. If you were to use a star tracker, the moon would stay in the centre of the frame throughout the shoot without you having to move it. You can shoot the eclipse either way, it will only change how you post-process your photos.  

* Update: I used a star tracker for my second and third attempts at capturing the lunar eclipse and the quality was drastically improved. I will prepare a separate guide for how to use the star tracker in the future.

Camera Settings

Wide Angle Composition

For a wide angle shot, the settings may vary depending on the surrounding landscape. If shooting in the range of around 10 – 30 mm, you can likely shoot at up to a 15s shutter speed, with an ISO around 100 with your largest aperture (e.g., f2 or f3.5). That said, I would recommend taking some test shots to see how the moon appears in your composition the night before to make sure you are comfortable with the settings you want to use.

Additionally, if you would like the stars to appear crisp in your shot along with the moon, the shutter speed will depend on the specific focal length you are using (see the 500 Rule below). PhotoPills has a handy “pill” that does this calculation for you based on your specific camera and focal length.

Keep in mind that the moon will darken drastically (8 stops or more) during totality, so you may need to decrease (slow down) the shutter speed part way through the eclipse.

When in doubt, try to use the Looney 11 Rule for shooting the moon. This rule suggests the following settings as a baseline:

• Aperture at f11
• Shutter speed = 1/ISO

The reason for this rule is that the moon has such vast change in depth with its mountains and valleys that we can actually notice a difference in sharpness if the depth of field is too small (i.e., the aperture is very open, such as f2). If you are shooting very wide angle, you may not notice a detail drop by using lower aperture, since the moon will be relatively small in the frame anyways.

Note that this rule begins to break down at longer focal lengths due to motion blur.

Telephoto Composition

For a telephoto shot, things get a bit more complicated. I shot with a telephoto lens at 560 mm, so my settings were controlled by trying to maximize exposure while minimizing blur of the moon.

Though it is strange to think about since it appears almost stationary to us, the moon is moving quite quickly through the night sky, especially relative to the camera sensor when zoomed in at 500+ mm. For example, it took around 15 minutes for the moon to move from one side of my sensor to the other.

I found that the moon moved through roughly three phases of settings during the eclipse:

Phase 1: 0 – 20% eclipsed

Phase 2: 20% to 80% eclipsed

Phase 3: 80% to 98% eclipsed

Each phase required a fairly drastic change in settings from my camera. The phases then occur in reverse as the moon moves back out of the umbra.

The eclipse on May 15 will be a total lunar eclipse, which means that there will likely be a fourth phase: when the moon is completely in the umbra. During totality, there will be no highlight to expose for, which could result in needing much more exposure, even as compared to the partial lunar eclipse.

Shutter Speed

A general rule when shooting astrophotography is the 500 Rule. This rule states that the shutter speed should be no longer than 500/focal length (full frame equivalent). Accordingly, if I were shooting at 500 mm, the maximum length shutter speed I could use would be 500/500 = 1 s. Any longer than that and I would experience star trailing.

Keep in mind that this rule is a general rule of thumb used for stars specifically. Stars do not have the same level of detail that the moon does since the moon is so much closer.

The best way to determine your maximum shutter speed is to test it out a few days before at your desired focal length to see when the moon begins to blur. For example, when shooting the moon with telephoto lenses, another general rule of thumb is to shoot at a shutter speed = 1/125s or faster. Shooting at this speed will keep the moon sharp despite its relatively rapid movement through the night sky.

Also keep in mind that motion blur is not salvageable. If the shot is blurry, it cannot be saved. However, if there is noise in the shot from high ISO, noise can be reduced in post-processing.

At 560 mm, based on the 500 rule, the slowest I could technically shoot was around 0.8 s. However, I experienced some heavy cloud cover, so there were times when I exposed for longer than that to compensate for the inability to see the moon through the clouds. These shutter speeds introduced too much motion blur, making most of the shots unusable.

Aperture

While an aperture in the range of f9 to f11 is ideal when shooting the moon to capture the depths of its seas, we want to avoid introducing as much noise in the image as possible. The sharpness lost shooting at a lower aperture (i.e., below f9) may be worth it to reduce noise introduced into the shot by shooting at a higher ISO (more on this below). 

Since I was using my Sony 100-400 with a 1.4x teleconverter at 560 mm, the largest aperture I could use was f8, so I shot at this aperture throughout the shoot.

When the shutter speed and aperture are maxed out, the final step is to vary the ISO.

ISO

Each camera has a native ISO level that produces the lowest amount of noise for that sensor. For my Sony a7iii, the native ISO is 100. When selecting your ISO settings, remember that lower ISO = lower noise introduced into the shot and conversely, higher ISO = more noise. The increase in noise from shooting at higher ISO is why shutter speed and aperture are used to maximize brightness for most shooting situations, since they do not introduce noise. However, as noted above, using longer shutter speeds (slower than 1/125 s) introduces motion blur to moon shots. Accordingly, shooting the moon becomes a balance of ISO and shutter speed to maximize the sharpness of the image; we want to have a slower shot to reduce noise, but not so slow that we introduce more motion blur error than would have been introduced by noise due to increasing the ISO.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the specific conditions that you are experiencing the night of the lunar eclipse, so be prepared to be flexible during your shoot. Understanding how the settings will impact the quality of your shot will help you to maximize your chances of a successful lunar eclipse shoot.

Exposure Bracketing

One way to deal with the changing light is to shoot with exposure bracketing. When exposure bracketing, the camera will take a number of photos at a range of exposure settings. For example, my camera can take 3, 5, or 9 shots, each with a range of 0.5 EV, 1 EV, 2 EV, or 3 EV. Accordingly, you can take a range of shutter speeds without having to have the perfect settings and you can select the best quality photos afterwards. Note that this approach will lead to many extra photos being taken, so make sure that you have a memory card that can handle the number of shots you want to take.

Why bother with exposure bracketing? Aside from building in a safety factor for getting the ideal shutter speed, shooting with exposure bracketing can also allow for high dynamic range (HDR) shots to be produced in post-processing (more on this in part II). Additionally, you can compile a timelapse with the sharpest shots at each phase of the eclipse, without having to worry about changing the settings every few minutes.

When planning my settings for the lunar eclipse of November 19, 2021, I decided on two bracketed ranges: 2 EV 5 and 1 EV 9. The first range was used when the moon was relatively bright in the sky, from about 10% to 85% eclipsed. The second range was used when the moon began to approach totality, from 85% to 98% eclipsed.

Focus

Once you have your settings figured out, your next step is to focus on the moon. If you have never shot the moon before, I highly recommend practicing getting the focus right a few days before shooting the lunar eclipse. Getting the focus perfect for lunar photography can be quite challenging, especially when dealing with a lunar eclipse. My technique is to find a very obvious crater on the moon and shift the focus until I can see that region very clearly.

I recommend zooming in as far as possible and using either the view finder or live view to check how sharp the moon is. Autofocus is a good start, but I have found that my camera autofocus does not quite get the tack sharp craters that I can get if I use manual focus. So, I start with auto focus to get a general focus range and then I tweak it using manual focus. Autofocus will also not work during the different phases of the eclipse; the moon begins to darken too much for the camera to automatically focus on the detailed features of the moon.

Accordingly, I focused on the moon before the eclipse starts and take a few test shots. For each shot, I reviewed the photo and zoomed in to check that everything was as sharp as it could be. Once the focus was as good as I could get it, I left the camera in manual focus mode so that subsequent shots didn’t alter the focus.

Make sure that your focus does not change during the shoot. My 100-400 has a smooth/tighten ring, so I can manually set the lens to be more difficult to accidentally change the focus. If your lens does not have that, and you are worried about the focus ring shifting during your shoot, you can get a piece of tape and tape the focus ring down.

General Notes

Turn off image stabilization when using a tripod. The motor used for stabilization can actually introduce shake into the shot when sitting on a tripod, so it’s best to turn this setting off.

Turn off long exposure noise reduction (LENR). Some cameras have this feature automatically turned on. This feature takes a second shot after the first shot with shutter closed, producing a dark frame. The camera then uses the dark frame to remove noise from the shot. However, this can take a long time, more than doubling the length of each shot, making this setting impractical for timelapse photography.

Always shoot in RAW. You can export as JPEGs if you want to afterwards, but if you shoot in JPEG, you cannot salvage the data that was lost by not shooting in RAW. Additionally, you will likely be cropping the photo to centre the moon, so shooting in RAW can help retain detail. Also, RAW images have much more dynamic range, an essential component of shooting the lunar eclipse. Shoot in RAW, I can’t overemphasize this. Note that shooting in RAW will increase the file size of each photo, so you should double check that your memory card can handle the number of RAW photos you would like to take, especially if you are planning on shooting a timelapse.

Expose for the highlights until totality, then expose the shadows. Shadows can often be recovered when shooting in RAW, but if the highlights are blown out, there is no data to salvage. Accordingly, while the moon still has a bright portion, it is worth exposing for the highlights to retain data, only switching to the shadows once the last sliver of light is eclipsed.

Most of the time, I shoot in auto white balance. However, when shooting a timelapse, it can be beneficial to set a constant white balance setting for the entire timelapse. Setting a constant white balance can reduce flicker in the end video.

Breathe. Remember, the lunar eclipse takes a long time, so you can practice taking a few shots at each phase to get your ideal exposure. The totality will last around 80 minutes, so there is plenty of time to try and get the perfect shot. That is, unless you are trying to take a timelapse. A timelapse complicates things, because too many practice shots will remove images from the progression of the eclipse, making the end video a bit jumpy. It is possible to reduce this stuttered look in post-production, which I will talk about more in part II.

Example Settings

During Phase 1, I shot at fairly constant settings: 1/500, ISO 100, f8. As the moon began to darken, I slowed down the shutter speed as needed to maintain the exposure, trying not to go slower than 1/125 s.

During Phase 2, I set up exposure bracketing to give myself a range of shots to test which settings performed the best. Since this was my first time shooting the lunar eclipse, I wasn’t sure how much blur and noise would be at odds with one another for different settings. Accordingly, I set a 5 bracket with 2EV at a shutter speed of 1/10 s, ISO 100, f8. This bracket setting gave a range of shutter speeds from 1/160 to 1.6 s.

During Phase 3, I set up a 9 bracket 1EV at a shutter speed of 0.4 s ISO 250 f8, which gave me a range of 1/40 to 3.2 s. I also tried bumping up my ISO to 640, but found that it looked very grainy, so I dropped it down to 250.

The result of this experiment was that I ended up using shots taken at the faster range of my brackets in post-production. The slower shots lost a lot of detail due to motion blur. I did not listen to the 500 rule and as a result, my shots contained a lot of useless images. In hindsight, it likely would have made for better photos during totality if I had used higher ISO and faster shutter speed; most shots over 0.8 s were too blurry to be used. When in doubt, shoot at higher ISO and faster shutter speeds.

When I go to shoot my next eclipse, my plan is to do the following:

Phase 1: same as before, shoot starting at 1/500 s and decrease down to 1/125 s as needed to compensate for the darkening of the moon.

Phase 2: once I hit 1/125 s, I will increase my ISO to 640 and begin bracketing, probably at a range of 5 1EV, continuing to slow the shutter speed as needed to expose the moon properly. Remember, my camera is ISO invariant, so anything above 640 will look almost the same in post-production.

Phase 3: I have to be a bit flexible here, as it depends on how dark the moon actually gets. I will slow the shutter speed as needed, up to a maximum bracketed shutter speed of 1 s. If there is cloud cover, I may need to increase this further. Once the moon is 100% eclipsed, I may need to increase the exposure even further than I did during the partial lunar eclipse in November.

Once totality has ended, I will then return to the Phase 2 settings, and then to the Phase 1 settings.

Timelapse Settings

Planning

I will give a brief introduction on timelapse photography here, but please note that a lunar eclipse timelapse is a bit more confusing and difficult than a stationary landscape timelapse. The moon moves through the sky quite quickly, so if you do not have a star tracker (which I didn’t for my first attempt) then you have to move the lens to recentre the moon regularly. Accordingly, the moon will change position during the eclipse and will need to be recentred often (I found about every 15 minutes).

Unfortunately, alignment software is not good enough at this time to automatically align lunar eclipse photos, since the dynamic range in the moon changes so much over the course of the evening. This lack of appropriate software meant I had to hand align every image in the timelapse. Hand aligning hundreds of photos is very time consuming.

When setting up a timelapse, I run through the following steps:

1. Select the camera settings for the shoot;
2. Select how long I want the end video to be;
3. Select the number of shots; and
4. Select the interval between shots.

How long do you want your video to be? My go-to length for a timelapse is usually around a minute. I have found that it is always easier to speed up a longer video than slow down a shorter video. Slowing down a longer video can be done using different video editing techniques, but the result is less smooth than taking more photos and speeding the video up.

If I want my video to be played at 30 frames per second (fps) and I want a 60 second video, that means I will need to take 60 seconds X 30 frames/second = 1800 photos. Similarly, if I want my video to be played at 24 fps and I want a 60 second video, that means I will need to take 60 seconds X 24 frames/second = 1440 photos.

The umbral portion of the lunar eclipse (which includes totality) on May 15, 2022 will last 3.5 hours, 210 minutes, or 12,600 seconds. If I want to make a 60 s video in that time frame, I need to divide the total duration of the shoot by the number of shots needed to make that duration of video, or 12,600/1800 = 7 second interval. This is a lot of photos, especially if you are shooting with bracketed exposures. If shooting with a 5 bracket range, that would be a total of 5 brackets X 1800 shutter clicks = 9000 photos.

For most people, a 15 s or 30 s video is likely sufficient, which would be 450 or 900 photos, respectively. To shoot 450 photos over the 3.5 hours, the interval would need to be 28s. To shoot 900 photos over the 3.5 hours, the interval would need to be 14 seconds.

When I selected the frames for my timelapse to hand align them, I ended up selecting photos that were taken approximately every 4 minutes, which ended up being around 380 photos (the lunar eclipse in November 2021 was much longer than the one in May will be). I then slowed down the video by 5 times and used video editing software (Final Cut Pro X) to interpolate between frames to produce a fairly smooth result.

In other words, for something that changes as slowly as the lunar eclipse, you may be able to get away with taking less photos and slowing the timelapse video down afterwards. Taking fewer photos will also speed up the post-processing of your timelapse. If you have a star tracker, this will likely not be an issue since the moon will remain in the same relative position throughout the entire shoot, making it much easier to align the frames of the timelapse.

The Shoot

Once you have selected your settings for the timelapse, it is time to enter them into your intervalometer. If you are not taking a bracketed timelapse, you can possibly use the intervalometer built into your camera, like the one on my Sony A7iii. If your camera does not have a built-in intervalometer, you will need to use an external one.

Unfortunately, my built-in intervalometer cannot shoot a bracketed exposure, so I used the Shutter App to wirelessly connect to my camera. I used the intervalometer mode on the app and set my camera to my desired bracket. This setup meant that the Shutter app would trigger the shutter on my camera to take “a photo”. Triggering the shutter in continuous bracket mode meant that each time the Shutter app triggered my camera, my camera would take the bracketed range of shots.

In this way, I was able to take a bracketed timelapse. My goal with taking a bracketed timelapse was to try and make an HDR timelapse of the entire lunar eclipse. My thought was that by doing so, I could capture a lot more detail of the moon as it moved through various phases. Unfortunately, due to the misalignment of so many shots, it was impractical to compile each bracketed series of 3-5 shots into one HDR shot and then compile the HDR shots into a timelapse. I may try to do so in the future, but did not have the time to make such a complicated HDR timelapse.

If I had shot the eclipse with a star tracker, I think it would have been a lot more feasible, since the auto HDR button in Lightroom likely would have been able to deal with the HDR stacking of each bracket (maybe). HDR stacking with lunar eclipse images is often done by hand, since the large dynamic range between the shots confuses most alignment software.

It is also possible that in the near future there will be software that can intelligently align something as complicated as a lunar eclipse HDR bracket. These types of software are improving all the time. By taking these photos, I gave myself more options on how to process them in the future.

Long story short, I took far more photos than I needed to and ended up compiling the timelapse using single images instead of HDR shots. I’m still glad that I took bracketed exposures, since I gave myself a lot of flexibility on which shots to select for the resultant timelapse.

My plan for this upcoming shoot is to take a bracketed exposure every 30 seconds for most of the eclipse, and perhaps shorten the interval as the moon approaches totality. Interesting things happen to the last sliver of the moon as it dips into the umbra, so having a faster interval can capture a bit more detail.

By setting the interval to 30 s, I will take 12,600s/30s= 420 shots. 420 shots/30 fps = 14 s duration video. If I take a 5 shot bracket throughout the timelapse, that means I will take 2100 photos.

Record a Video

An alternative to taking a timelapse is to record the entire lunar eclipse, changing the settings as needed to get the ideal exposure throughout the video. By recording the eclipse, you would be, in effect, taking thousands and thousands of images.

The benefit of taking so many images is that a post-processing technique known as lucky imaging can be used. Lucky imaging operates by taking a few hundred to a few thousand frames taken at identical camera settings, scanning all of the images to determine the images that have the highest sharpness, and stacking these images to reduce noise.

Note that I have not tried this myself, but that I think it could produce interesting results. Let me know if you have ever tried this, I’m be curious to see how it works.

May 15, 2022 Result Using a Star Tracker

Update from the Total Lunar Eclipse of May 15, 2022. I used a star tracker (Skywatcher Star Adventurer Pro 2i) so that I could take longer exposures. Note that you will also want the equatorial mount and the counterweight kit for telephoto shooting. I’m very glad that I was able to use a star tracker for this eclipse, as the clouds were so thick that I needed to shoot at 30s + in order to even see the moon.

The star tracker also greatly simplified my editing process as I did not need to align the moons to create a timelapse. Instead, the star tracker kept the moon in the centre of the frame (for the most part).

Here is the result from the May 15, 2022 total lunar eclipse:

November 8, 2022 Total Lunar Eclipse Using a Star Tracker

For once, there was a clear night during the lunar eclipse. My third and final attempt (at least until the year 2025) was by far my best result. The moon also set during totality, picking up the colours of the sunrise, which is why the moon turns purpose.

This video shows the wide angle timelapse method and the telephoto timelapse method.

Summary

In summary, if you have planned your shoot, capturing the lunar eclipse is not difficult. There are many factors and settings to consider and understanding how your exposure will change throughout the shoot can help improve the quality of your results.

My process is the following: