April 2020’s Super “Pink” Moon

Click on the images to see them in full screen view

I took some photographs of the Total Lunar Eclipse 28 September 2015 using a Pentax K-x + DA L 50-200mm at 200mm (300mm 35mm equiv).

We’d had several very sunny days this week so it was possible the nights would be clear and it seemed a good opportunity to try taking some moon photographs again. But I now had a different camera and lens combination (Olympus OM-D E-M1II + M.Zuiko 75-300mm f4.8-6.7 = 150-600mm 35m equiv), and needed to work out the best settings. 

On 7 April I set up the tripod on the balcony and took a series of photographs at various speed settings. The images weren’t as clear as I’d expected, despite using a 2 second delayed exposure function on the camera (some residual vibration after pushing the release?) 

So on 8 April I set the camera on the tripod again, but this time I connected the camera to my phone using WiFi so I could vary the exposure timing and trigger the shots remotely without camera shake. I was very happy with the results this time

Collage of moon 8 April 2020 images

Of the various exposure timings, this was about the best in giving good detail, including the craters visible on the right-hand side and the overall surface. This is a crop of about 0.38 linear from the original image. 

"Pink" moon
8 April 2020 22:41 (CET)
ISO 200 1/500sec f10.0 300mm (=600mm)

As a 600mm (35mm equivalent) lens has a magnification of 12x (a 50mm lens is usually regarded as having the same magnification, but not field of view, as the human eye, so is considered as 1x) this image is equivalent to a magnification of 31.6x (12/0.38).