Moorhead, Minnesota

The total lunar eclipse is just concluding as I am writing this. I was up early taking photos of the “blood moon.” I know there are a number of professional photographers and amateur photographers with far more experience than I. My purpose for posting these images is to ask for your comments as to improvements that could be made in technique and equipment.

Details on the opening photo:

Nikon D7000
f/6.3
0.8 seconds
ISO 3200
Tamron 18-270 mm zoom set to 270 mm
Manual focus
Vibration compensation turned off (as recommended in the manual for tripod mounted shots)

I used Adobe Lightroom to crop and process the photo, tweaking exposure, saturation and noise reduction. My question for experts to comment on is why there appears to be a small camera movement. You can see it in the star left of the moon.
The camera was mounted on a tripod, focus on manual, mirror in the up position (live view) and shutter triggered by wireless remote. All photos exhibited this tiny motion or worse. I suspect it’s something in the camera.

This image was taken at 5:14 AM CDT a few minutes prior to total eclipse.

This image was taken at 5:51 AM CDT and represents a minor cropping for placing the moon in the upper right location.

I am looking forward to any comments and constructive criticism you may have.

John Steiner