When Earth’s shadow blocks the sunlight that is reflected off the moon, we get a lunar eclipse. There are three types of lunar eclipses: a total, partial, and penumbral. A total lunar eclipse is often referred to as a blood moon because the moon appears to turn a reddish color when Earth completely blocks sunlight from reaching the moon. Lunar eclipses don’t happen too often, so when they do, it’s a great time to whip out that camera to capture the momentous occasion. Follow the tips below to learn how to photograph a lunar eclipse.

Tip 1: Plan Ahead

The first most obvious question to answer is when will a lunar eclipse happen, and will you be able to view it where you are located? To answer this question, visit https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/ and enter your location into the search box.

The time and date website will then let you know when the next visible eclipse from your location will be (both solar and lunar eclipses). What I love about this website is that it even provides you with an animation to let you know approximately what the eclipse will look like at particular times, so that you can better plan. You’ll be able to tell when the eclipse will start and when the eclipse will end.

You also might want to check the weather forecast for the eclipse date. Cloudy and rainy skies could potentially ruin your photo opportunity.

Tip 2: Use a Tripod and Cable Release

Camera shake is your enemy! You’ll most likely be using long shutter speeds and any minor shake to your camera will lead to blurry photos. So first and foremost use a stable tripod. Second, use a cable release to trigger your shutter instead of pressing the shutter button on the camera. If you don’t want to buy a shutter release, you can also just use the self timer feature to eliminate camera shake from pressing the shutter button.

Tip 3: Take Wide Angle Shots

The moon will appear very small with a wide angle lens. The benefit of using a wide angle is that you can include foreground elements for a more interesting composition. Additionally, you can take multiple pictures of the phases of the lunar eclipse and then stack them into a final image to show the natural movement of the moon as it progresses through the eclipse cycle. A beautiful example of this is shown in the picture below by Jose Antonio Hervas

To determine where to point your camera, you’ll need to know where the moon will be positioned over time. I recommend using the PhotoPills Planner app to help you with this. It offers a graphical map where you can see the location of the sun and moon over time.

The PhotoPills app even features an augmented reality mode so that you can visit your planned photo location before hand and the Photo Pills app will have an overlay of where the moon would be, so you can check your composition.

I rarely pay for apps and this is one of the apps that I actually shelled out some money for. But even then it didn’t cost too much. I would highly recommend it for photographers interested in capturing lunar eclipses, the Milky Way, or landscape photos in general. For full disclosure, I’m in no way getting compensated for recommended this app. It’s just that good. I will admit there is a slight learning curve, but PhotoPills offers great tutorials including their very detailed tutorial on how to take lunar eclipse photos.

Now that you know where to point your camera let’s get down to camera settings.

Camera settings to start with:

• Use your lens’s widest focal length, hopefully somewhere in the 18-35 mm range.
• Set your focus at infinity
• Begin with ISO 400 at the widest aperture (smaller f number)
• Try different shutter speeds that will result in good exposures. Adjust your shutter speed in 5 second increments but do not exceed a shutter speed length of 40 seconds. Anything longer than that will result in blur due to the rotation of the earth.
• You can also use the Lunar Eclipse Exposure Calculator to get some base settings
• If you want to ultimately stack your images into 1 image to show the progression of the eclipse, take one photo every few minutes.

Tip 4: Take Telephoto Shots

Quite the opposite from the wide angle lunar eclipse shot, the telephoto shot will zoom into the moon so that the moon is the only thing in the frame. The moon will appear much larger compared to when taken with a wide angle lens.

With telephoto shots, you can also take a series of telephoto shots and then combine them into one image to show the progression of the lunar eclipse.

Camera settings to start with:

• Use a telephoto lens, 300mm or longer is ideal, and set your lens to its farthest focal length.
• Set your focus at infinity or try to zoom in on the moon and either attempt to autofocus or manually focus until the moon appears sharp
• Begin with ISO 400-800 at the widest aperture (smaller f number)
• Try different shutter speeds that will result in good exposures. Begin with a fast shutter speed about 1/100 sec. Adjust your shutter speed in 5 second increments as appropriate but do not exceed a shutter speed length of 40 seconds. Anything longer than that will result in blur due to the rotation of the earth
• You can also use the Lunar Eclipse Exposure Calculator to get some base settings
• The moon’s brightness is going to fluctuate greatly throughout the eclipse process so use your camera’s bracket settings (if available). With bracketing, your camera can automatically take 3 images (one underexposed, one regular exposure, and one overexposure. Set your bracket so that there is a difference of one or two f/stops between each of the 3 images
• Take a bracketed series of photos every few minutes depending on how long the eclipse will last.

Tip 5: Practice Practice Practice

The moon rises about 50 minutes later each night, so if you want to practice the night before the eclipse, plan to start shooting 50 minutes earlier than you would on eclipse night.