Settings for Lunar Eclipse tonight?

[Natdiamond]

I know it's short notice, but I just found out about tonights total Lunar eclipse. For those who have never seen one, or paid any attention to them, outside of seeing the rings of Saturn with your own eyes through a telescope, the TOTAL lunar eclipse is the most awesome thing you could ever witness in the night sky. Our whole lives we see the moon in it's glowing bright white light, but on a total lunar eclipse, the full moon barely glows in a reddish hue, no glow around it at all. It really takes on a 3-d look and you really get the sense that it IS just a rock floating out in space, I recommend looking! 9:00 Tonight.
Now, my question is, since it hardly has any light reflecting off of it, what might be the optimal settings for an HV20 on a tripod? By the way, it's dim enough to actually be hard or impossible to view with a telescope. Usually the naked eye is best.

[veg]

Ahem!
"9:00 Tonight"
Where?
There are people here from all over the world.
Anyway...set your Zebra to 100% and manual your exposure down until the stripes just disappear. This will be slightly under exposed in the highlights but at least you will get all the detail and you can lift it in post.
Important thing is to not have blown highlights as the eclipse begins. Don't be worried if it gets dark. Its meant to. Its an eclipse! Don't try to 'open up' as the eclipse progresses or your "diamond ring" effect will be blown.
Its 4am tomorrow morning now in my Mother-in-Laws country.
YEAH!!!! Love it when she's asleep
veg.
Edit: Depending on where you are (Geograhically) and weather you may not have enough light on the moon to kick off your zebras. Don't worry, just make sure that you've locked your gain or you'll get a blizzard of noise as the camera tries to expose.
White balance for daylight

[Natdiamond]

Oops, 9:00 united states Eastern Standard time in north america.

I am a total newbie not only to my HV20 but also to film in general, but it sounds like the process you described is designed to get the process of the changing from light to dark, as the shadow moves across the moon.
I guess I should have been more specific, but I really want the "dark red" moon on tape AFTER all the white is gone. I figured because it would be in a relatively low light situation and there will be no glow on the moon, it would be hard to capture on video?
Again, I'm new, so if the process you described is for the Dark Moon (totality) then, my bad.

[veg]

....and 10 out of 10 to the Wag who just mailed me to say that I forgot to mention putting a Battery Light on the Hot Shoe.!!!

[AntiquePhotons]

I might give it a try with the HV20 since I'm going to be out there imaging the event with this http://www.pbase.com/mataylor/image/82926642 anyway.

If the sky clears by then that is. It doesn't look promising at the moment.

[veg]

Now that looks like the D.B's!
But why a solid roof?
veg
EDIT: Apologies. Just read the 'roll-off' roof bit.
Neat.
How quickly can you switch cameras onto that rig?

[AntiquePhotons]

Now that looks like the D.B's!
But why a solid roof?
veg
EDIT: Apologies. Just read the 'roll-off' roof bit.
Neat.
How quickly can you switch cameras onto that rig?

Pretty quick actually. If I get to image with the HV20 I have a way to mount it on top of the blue scope so it can ride piggyback. The mount is accurate enough to track any target all night & once I turn the video into an AVI I have a software that will register & stack the AVI frames into a single still photo. I've wondered about attaching the HV20 to the white scope in prime focus, not sure it would reach focus through the scopes optics plus I'd have to make a custom adapter. Maybe I'll try it some day.

The CCD camera that's attached to the white scope in the photo is an SBIG ST2000XM, the one on the blue scope is a Meade DSI Pro II. One camera images while the other locks onto a star & guides with mount to a very high degree of sub acrsecond accuracy.

[V10TDI]

...Don't be worried if it gets dark. Its meant to. Its an eclipse! Don't try to 'open up' as the eclipse progresses or your "diamond ring" effect will be blown...

I think the "diamond ring" effect is something that you might see during a solar eclipse, not a lunar eclipse.

[spencer4higher]

so did anyone give the settings for the eclipse ? I am ready to go. settings would be sweet

[Kyleman]

so did anyone give the settings for the eclipse ? I am ready to go. settings would be sweet

Ahhh, lucky. It's cloudy here in here in Memphis.

[Ivan Fuentes]

clear skies in Santiago, Chile (South America for those who didn't pay much attention in school hehe).

[Natdiamond]

Friggin' clouds! It was truly comical how an entire cloud front moved in, perfectly timed to completely block the eclipse for me. Unbelievable. Oh well, thanks anyway.

[w.pasman]

so did anyone give the settings for the eclipse ? I am ready to go. settings would be sweet

No one did for the optimal settings *during* the eclipse.
If you set it optimal for that, the moon will be extremely overexposed just before and after.
Anyway I don't think you can determine it unless you did it before.

I would recommend an auto exposure setting and have it auto expose lightly on the dark side. That's my recommended auto setting anyways.

[um3k]

It was clear here, but damn cold. I got some footage of the start of the eclipse, but gave up when my battery died, so no totality.

EDIT: Shooting in cinemode, I used a LED flashlight to bias the exposure lock to keep the illuminated part of the moon from blowing out. Ended up at f/7.3 or so. Autoexposure would certainly have messed things up royally.

[V10TDI]

I had clouds at the beginning, but it cleared up most of the way through the eclipse.

I used full optical zoom & the Canon telephoto lens @24p on a tripod with a couple of different settings...

I'm a newbie and not sure of the right words, but there was a lot of "dynamic range" contained in the frame. Meaning that the very small portion of the moon that is in the sun is very bright, while the rest of the moon was dark red, and the sky (most of the framed image) was pitch black. So...

My initial takes had a LOT of grain in them caused by the extreme amount of gain the camera wanted to add to ensure exposure of the darker areas of the moon and the sky. The sunlit portion of the moon was "blown out" with no visible detail.

For my final takes, I locked the aperture at 3.7 and 4.0, then using 100% zebras, I tried to capture more detail on the sunlit side of the moon. This was well after totality, so the bright area of the moon was increasing. When I showed the movies to other people, most of them preferred these images.