I half thought about photographing the “blood moon” eclipse on March 3, 2026 because the next one isn’t going to happen until December 31, 2028 (and it won’t even be visible in California). The next full lunar eclipse that will be visible in California is June 26, 2029. I’ve made a couple of previous attempts.
Because totality wouldn’t happen until ~3:00 AM PST, I was hoping it’d be overcast in my location because of the Marine Layer (the natural air-conditioning that makes the coast of California a nice place to live), but when I went outside around 11:00 PM (PST), March 2nd, the sky was clear.
I grudgingly pulled out my 40-year-old Gitzo 320 Studex Performance tripod paired with a similarly old Arca-Swiss B1 Ball Head. The last film camera I bought as a professional photographer was the Nikon F4s but as a hobbyist, the last serious camera I bought was a Nikon D500, 10 years ago.
In my professional photography career, I have never owned a big lens. From the late 1970s to the 1990s, whenever I needed one at an event, Nikon Professional Services was there to lend them. Also, I never had the scratch to buy Nikon 300mm, f2.8 let alone a Nikon 600mm f4. Consequently, my longest lens is a Nikon Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 AI-S, which, according to this Nikon lens database, was made in the late 1970s. It was probably a big purchase for me when I was a poor, struggling photographer in New York City in the late 1970s.
Thus equipped, I set up in front of the house and started taking photos a little after 2 AM, when the earth’s shadow started to creep over the moon.
Side by side, the images show the contrast in color between the beginning of the eclipse and full “blood” moon. My disappointment came when I looked at the images at 100% – the full image size.. The first photo was sharp; the exposure was 1/1000 sec @ f11, ISO 800. The full eclipse exposure was ¼ sec. @ f5.6, ISO 1600 and it was blurry. For the long exposures, I used the self-timer delay of 2 seconds, which seems to have not been enough time for the camera to settle down. If I were a careful photographer, I also would have locked up the mirror before taking the photo or used a higher ISO setting. Hopefully, I’ll remember this in 2029.
