Finally, My Lunar Eclipse montage!

Post by **JGrube** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:07 pm

Shot this on my Nizo S800 in October 2004, about three days after my son Jacob was born.

I FINALLY got it transferred, uploaded into my computer and edited. Here is a small window version of the final product; about 60 seconds long. Enjoy and feel free to comment!

http://www.evilgeniusproductions.com/im ... e_2004.mpg

Best,

Jason

Post by **sooper8fan** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:34 pm

That was really cool! So, was that the sun then? (forgive me, I failed science

) What kind of special prep was needed to shoot this? Any special filters? And what film stock? It looks really clean.....thanks for posting it! Do you have any other film clips that you can post?

Post by **JGrube** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:53 pm

It's Kodachrome 40, no filter, 10 second intervals. The bulk of it was shot at f4.0. When the moon fully eclipsed, I opened up to F1.8 and locked the shutter open for 10 second long exposures, which burned red in the film (the "sun" at the end is actually the fully eclipsed moon still rising).

It came out really well, I've been shooting moon rises for years and have finally gotten the hang of exposing for texture in the surface of the moon. I actually got this transferred along with a bunch of other time-lapse stuff this year. I'll post more soon.

As for preparation, that's a funny story. My mother was in town for the birth of my son. I was standing on the front porch of my house watching the full moon come over the horizon right around sunset. My mother walked outside and said "hey, I heard on the news that there's going to be a lunar eclipse in about 45 minutes." So, I ran inside, grabbed my camera/tripod/light meter and set up as quickly as I could to capture it, I was very lucky.

Jason

Post by **timdrage** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:54 pm

Nice! I love the moon!

Wish we had more large objects flying around the planet to film!

I'd love to rig up some insanely long lens/telescope arrangement and shoot some super-8 closeups of the thing.

Post by **audadvnc** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 9:06 pm

Looks nice. Could you tell us about the transfer, preferred codec, the geek stuff?

Post by **JGrube** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:16 pm

Justin Lovell did the transfer for me (great work too) onto a miniDV tape at Frame Discreet. I firewired it into the computer from a Sony DV camera, edited in Vegas Video, and rendered as an .AVI file. To post it on the web, I loaded the rendered file into MGI Video Wave and converted it to a small, quicktime compatible MPEG.

Hope this helps,

Jason

Post by **super8man** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:17 pm

Loved it, thanks for sharing!

Question: how come did you not render directly into quicktime from Vegas? Also, what level of QT did you use (256, 512, 1MB)?

Thanks again. I also shot some footage of the moon recently during an eclipse on the west coast USA. You're right, it will take me a few years to get better at the correct exposures.

Post by **JGrube** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 11:40 pm

Question: how come did you not render directly into quicktime from Vegas? Also, what level of QT did you use (256, 512, 1MB)?

Simply put, I have an older version of Vegas with none of the extra plug-ins (including the mpeg plug in). It will only render the final product as an .AVI. Since I already have MGI (free with my camcorder) which will convert anything into just about anything else, I'm just being a cheapskate and using that for now instead of buying the extra plug-ins.

The good exposure for the moon seems to be about one and a third stops up from a neutral reading (treating the moon as a grey card). This will make the surface white without losing the "man in the moon" detail (at least on reversal film, not yet tried it with negative). You can adjust from there depending on how bright you want the moon to appear, and that's just trial and error. Good luck! My forays into astronomical super 8 have been challenging, but fun.

Loved it, thanks for sharing!

Thank you! I'm just happy to have something to share, finally.

Best,

Jason

Post by **Justin Lovell** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 12:07 am

Hey Jason,

Nice work. Thanks for the comment.

Cool to see your work online.

Post by **studiocarter** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 1:04 am

Very nice; especially the red moon part; it looks like Mars! I wondered, How will he track the moon? Does he have an equatorial tripod?? I did some viewing with a 6" reflector as a teen and the moon moved so fast you hardly got a chance to look. Widescreen sells equipment for both. It would be really really cool to see it again with a 6" only this time on s8. Phew, would that be coool. Sun spots were really cool, too, hot rather. A filter about a half inch thick was used and the sun projected onto a card, just like a off the wall transfer with a projector. You could really see the spots.

Post by **steve hyde** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 2:55 am

..far out 8O Good idea!!!

Steve

Post by **Rollef** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 8:39 am

That was very cool and inspiring. Very well done

Timdrage wrote

I'd love to rig up some insanely long lens/telescope arrangement and shoot some super-8 closeups of the thing.

That would be a nalcom ftl set-up I guess?. Some one on this forum has done this I think, but I have forgotten the name.

Post by **HTTK** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 5:25 pm

Great idea and it was so fun to watch! Very nice photography. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Post by **sunrise** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 7:22 pm

how beautiful is the moon...

michael