Super Flower Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse with Olympus OM-D E-M1

Last Wednesday (as I write this) the world witnessed an astronomical phenomenon (wow, that's two big words put together) when a 'Supermoon' in May (also referred to as a Flower Moon) coincided with a total eclipse. The total lunar eclipse represented a rare 'trifecta': a full moon, a blood Supermoon, and a total lunar eclipse occurring simultaneously.

How rare was this event? One figure I heard was that this specific event won't happen again for another 40 years. There will be another two total lunar eclipses in 2022 - one in May 16 and one in November 8th. But it will be another 12 years before we see the next total lunar eclipse with a Supermoon (October 2033 according to NASA). So yeah, it's rare enough.

Start of the total lunar eclipse. E-M1 with Lumix 45-150mm

With such a rare event I was, of course, going to have to try and capture it. Now this may seem obvious, but even though it was going to be a Supermoon, and therefore closer to the Earth than normal, it's still a very, very, long way away (approximately 360,000 kilometres). So I was going to have to use my longest lens (biggest zoom). Which just so happens to be a Panasonic Lumix 45-150mm f4/5.6. Not very 'long' at all. But it's the best I've got, so it'll have to do.

We were very lucky here in New Zealand, in the Southern Hemisphere, as we were scheduled to have ideal weather conditions to watch the event unfold. This itself is nothing short of miraculous on the West Coast of the South Island where I live. We get a lot of rain - and clouds - so a completely clear night for star gazing is something of a rarity. Fortunately, on this occasion, we were blessed. Clear skies, no clouds, and not too cold (since we are coming into winter here in the Southern Hemisphere).

Blood Red Flower Moon. E-M1 f/5.6 @ 2.5secs, ISO 100

Having established the 'what' (camera and lens), the next consideration was 'how'?

It was always going to be tripod mounted - that's a given. And since it was also likely to be difficult lighting conditions, I also decided to shoot full manual - and manual focus.

As stated earlier, the moon is very far away, and so was quite small in the viewfinder. Despite this, it's also surprisingly very bright. With the camera set at its largest aperture (f/5.6 at 150mm), there was more than enough light to keep the ISO at 200 (or even the 'Low' 100 setting) - which was something of a surprise. The shutter speed ranged from a couple of seconds to only half a second - long enough to get enough light on the sensor, but short enough to keep the moon sharp.

Since the camera was on a tripod, I turned Image Stabilization off, and also set the camera to a 2 second self-timer release so I wasn't touching the shutter at the moment of release.

So the camera settings were fairly straight forward. What was a little more of a struggle was the manual focusing. For some reason, I really struggled to get the moon focused manually? I'm not sure whether the high brightness areas were making the lens struggle or what it was? I wouldn't have thought that it would make any difference if you were focusing manually? Maybe the 'throw' for manual focusing on the Lumix 45-150mm wasn't good enough for critical manual focusing work? It's not really a manual focusing lens to be fair. But whatever it was, manual focusing on the 45-150mm was difficult.

I did get there in the end though, And I'm very happy with the final blended montage I created of the eclipse.

Flower Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse montage. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Lumix 45-150mm

So why does the moon appear red? Blood Moon isn't a scientific term, but in recent years has been used to refer to a total lunar eclipse. A total lunar eclipse happens when the moon travels through the Earth's shadow (umbra) blocking all direct light from illuminating the Moon's surface. Some light still reaches the Moon's surface indirectly via the Earth's atmosphere, bathing the Moon in a reddish, yellow or orange glow.

However it happens, it's pretty cool to watch - and photograph. And I'm very glad that I stayed outside in the cold night air to capture a rare and spectacular phenomenon.