I spent about two hours shooting the supermoon eclipse of September 2015 until the clouds rolled in right at the mid-point of totality. The above shot was taken about 15 minutes into the eclipse. Right place, right time.

Exposure for most of the photos was 1/800 at f/8.0 and ISO 200. That surprised me — a full Moon is amazingly bright. The red moon was much harder to capture clearly. It was about 0.3 sec at f/5.6 and ISO 1600. Not ideal, but without a way for the camera to track the Moon as it drifts across the sky, its the best I could do. As a result, the red Moon is a bit grainy.

I was shooting with my Pentax K-3, a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, and Manfrotto tripod with a grip action ball head. Next eclipse, I’m definitely renting a bigger lens and getting the Pentax Astrotracer GPS unit.