Lunar Eclipse Photography with OM-1

Hi all...I have a question regarding lunar eclipse photograph with my OM-1. Normally I take long exposure deep sky photos, so I'm a bit new to this. I would like to know if it is possible to do multiple exposures of the eclipse stages to have them all on one slide (I'm using Kodak E200). If it is possible, how do you do it with the OM-1?? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Michael

You can do it, the multiple exposure part will be more tricky than with some cameras though. To do multiple exposures with the OM-1 you need to wind the film fairly taught with the rewind crank on the camera, take your expossure, then hold down the rewind button while you advance the film. If the film counter moves then you are out of luck and the film has moved. You will need a somewhat wide angle lens to capture the entire event without moving the camera. If you start with umbra first contact and end when the umbra leaves the moon, the moon will have traveled 46deg. in azimuth and 15deg. up in altitude. That is just outside the reach of a 50mm lens, a 35mm would be a better choice. If you try to start with penumbra contact and end with penumbra last contact, it will travel about 75deg. in azimuth, necessitating about a 24mm lens (which would make for a really tiny moon on film - 1/5mm ). The other option is to use a longer lens but come up with some sort of grid or plan to reposition the moon to the correct place in the frame for each shot.

Joplin

James,

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on this. The "hat-trick" works great for deep sky shots but it isn't fast enough for lunar photography - even during a total lunar eclipse. At an average camera lens F setting like F4 the proper shutter speed for the totally eclipsed moon is going to be about 1/4 second with 200 speed film. No one has hands that fast and even if you stopped the lens down to say, F16 - the partial phases of the eclipse would end up overexposed.

Joplin

Thank you all for your suggestions. I will post my pics after I take them (still keeping my fingers crossed that the sky is clear as forecasted).

Michael