Earth's shadow first touches the Moon at 01:24 UTC on August 28, though that early penumbral shading is subtle enough that most people won't notice right away. The clearly visible umbral phase begins at 02:34 UTC, when the umbra starts taking an increasingly large bite out of the lunar disk. It reaches maximum eclipse around 04:13 UTC and wraps up the umbral phase by 05:52 UTC. From first penumbral contact to last, the full event runs 339 minutes (EarthSky, 11 days ago).

Whether any of that is visible depends on where you're standing. The deepest phase sweeps across most of the Americas, except Alaska and northwestern Canada, along with western Europe and western Africa, while the fainter penumbral shading reaches as far as Greenland, Antarctica, and the eastern Pacific (NASA SVS, this week).

Location also decides which way to point the camera. Along the west coast of North America, the Moon rises in the east with the eclipse already underway, so get outside early and face that direction. Across Europe, the Moon sets in the west while still partially eclipsed near dawn, which calls for the same early start but a view toward the opposite horizon (Digital Camera World, 3 days ago).

Look up the local moonrise or moonset time and compass direction before heading out. If the Moon is going to sit low in the sky, scout a location now (a hill, a waterfront, an open field) rather than discovering a treeline is in the way at two in the morning.

For viewers where the Moon climbs high in the sky, especially on the U.S. East Coast, a detailed close-up of the lunar surface is within reach. That calls for at least a 400mm lens or a small telescope on a sturdy tripod. Reach matters here: a 100mm lens will still show a recognizable eclipsed disc, but stretching to 1,000mm brings out far more texture and color at the umbra's edge (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago).

Where the eclipse plays out closer to the horizon, in western North America or Europe, a foreground becomes possible. A 70-200mm lens lets the Moon sit against a skyline or landmark for scale (Digital Camera World, 3 days ago). If only one camera is available, decide between the two approaches before the umbral phase begins; swapping lenses mid-eclipse costs time that's better spent shooting.

Learning how to take pictures of a lunar eclipse doesn't require a telephoto lens if a phone is all that's on hand. A phone alone is well suited to capturing the atmosphere of the scene (Digital Camera World, 3 days ago). Turn off the flash and use the timer or a volume-button shutter trigger to cut down on shake (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago). For a closer view, hold the phone steady over a telescope eyepiece, starting some distance back and gradually easing in while watching the screen. A smartphone telescope adapter helps line up the phone's camera with the eyepiece, though it still takes some trial and error (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago).

To document the shadow's progress rather than freeze one moment, pick a fixed wide-field composition and shoot frames at consistent intervals. Four minutes apart works well for a composite sequence; tighter gaps of a minute or two suit an animation better (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago).

Get the setup done before the umbra arrives, while there's still nothing much to see. Bring a spare battery if one's available, clear space on the memory card, and set up the tripod somewhere solid well before moonrise, so there's no fumbling with legs in the dark once the eclipse actually starts.

Exposure has to shift as the eclipse moves along, and there's no single correct setting for the whole night. A tight 400mm close-up needs a faster shutter than a wide landscape frame to avoid blur, so treat the numbers below as a starting workflow to adjust from, not a fixed prescription.

1. Before the umbra arrives, expose for a normal full Moon. Start around ISO 100, f/8, and 1/125 to 1/250 second, the standard combination for a fully lit lunar disk (Digital Camera World, 3 days ago).
2. As the umbral bite grows, keep ISO low and the aperture wide. A range of ISO 200-400 gives a better tonal range and richer color along the shadow's edge; pairing that with a wide aperture and as short an exposure as the light allows limits blur from the Moon's own motion or wind shake on the tripod (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago).
3. Near maximum eclipse, protect shutter speed even if that means raising ISO. The Moon may become hundreds of times fainter than it was at the start of the night, and exposures can stretch toward 1/8 second (Digital Camera World, 3 days ago). Treat that figure as a rough starting point rather than a target: what works depends on focal length and how steady the tripod is, so raise ISO or lengthen exposure as needed and bracket several frames instead of hunting for one perfect setting.
4. Consider manual focus while the Moon is still bright, then check it again as conditions change. A dim, low-contrast Moon can be harder for autofocus to lock onto than a bright one, so confirm sharpness on the zoomed-in live view screen, and recheck after any lens or exposure change.
5. Read the histogram, and know what it's telling you. A well-exposed frame keeps its tonal peak clear of both edges of the graph; a peak pressed against either end means part of the image is clipped, though whether that matters depends on whether the bright limb or the shadow detail is the priority for that frame (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago).
6. Expose separately for the bright limb and the dark umbra. A frame exposed for the surviving sunlit sliver renders the umbra dark and featureless; expose for the red detail in the shadow and the bright limb blows out. No single frame at maximum eclipse holds both, so capture separate exposures and plan to combine them later (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago).
7. Lock the rig down with a sturdy tripod and a remote release or timer. That combination removes the shake that longer exposures would otherwise amplify (BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 2 days ago).

Bracketing during the shoot isn't the same as getting one perfectly exposed frame in camera. It's insurance. Automatic exposure bracketing captures a range of shutter speeds in a single pass, and shooting RAW rather than JPEG matters here because RAW preserves far more processing latitude for pulling detail out of both ends of that range (Digital Camera World, 3 days ago).

NASA's 96.3% figure for this eclipse measures the area of the lunar disk sitting inside the umbra. A different measurement, eclipse magnitude, works from the Moon's diameter instead, which is why other published percentages for the same event won't necessarily match (NASA SVS, this week). The practical takeaway matters more than the math: whichever number gets quoted, a narrow, sunlit limb will remain visible at maximum eclipse.

That persistent bright patch, not full even redness, is the visual signature separating this event from a true total eclipse (EarthSky, 11 days ago).

The red itself comes from Earth's atmosphere bending sunlight into the shadow, essentially every sunrise and sunset on the planet projected onto the Moon at once. Blue wavelengths scatter away while the longer red wavelengths bend into the shadow, painting the umbra in shades of copper, orange, and deep red (Digital Camera World, 3 days ago). Exactly which shade shows up varies from eclipse to eclipse and isn't easy to predict in advance.

Local sky conditions play a role too. Darker skies tend to reveal the red tone earlier in the eclipse, and observers in wildfire-affected areas might see a darker eclipse overall, with some possibly noticing more red coming through the haze and others simply seeing a dimmer Moon (EarthSky, 11 days ago).

If autofocus starts hunting and refuses to settle, that's the cue to switch to manual and confirm sharpness by eye on the live view screen rather than trusting the camera to find it on a dim target.

If the exposure looks off on the back of the camera but the histogram sits clear of both edges, trust the histogram over the screen. Screen brightness in the dark is deceptive and can make a properly exposed frame look either blown out or underexposed.

Once home, work through the bracketed set together rather than picking one "best" frame. Choose the exposure that holds detail in the bright limb without blowing it out, then a separate one where the umbra's red comes through clearly, and combine the two in an editor to show the full range the eye actually saw that night.

Clouds are the one variable no camera setting fixes. If they roll in, or a shot doesn't turn out the way it looked through the viewfinder, none of the practice is wasted: reading a histogram in the dark, bracketing exposures, and refocusing manually on a dim target are skills that carry over to every full Moon between now and the next deep eclipse.