During the last eclipse, I took out an old-school film SLR and shot about 20 shots at various partial and total phases. I don't have any good scans, so no attachments, but I'll tell you of my experiences anyhow so you can make better guestimates of your own shooting. I used ISO 400 slide film (Fuji Superia I believe) in badly light-polluted skies. You can adjust my values for whatever you're using.
General info:
-270 mm focal length gives reasonably good-sized image of the moon with some detail readily visible. You'll see maria and brighter areas easily, but likely not any detail of craters, etc.. If you can't do at least 200 mm or greater, I wouldn't expect anything other than vague dark and light areas...focus on framing and colour instead. All numbers given below based on using 270 mm focal length.
-For eclipsed phases, you'll need longer exposures...stability is critical. A little bit of "mirror slap" is evidently not too critical, but any jiggling of the remote release cable will blur everything you get. Therefore, do two things: first, get the most stable base you can, and second, use the "hat trick" ... block the lens with something, and then use that something (the hat) as a manual "shutter" once the camera has stabilized from triggering the release. If you have mirror lock-up, all the better.
During Partial Phases (nearly full):
-@ f/16, 1/500 (or shorter) will give some surface detail on illuminated portion. Any longer exposure tends to wash out detail
-with less than 25% eclipse, I never managed to get any detail in the eclipsed portion because the illuminated portion completely washed it out. Maybe you could find some detail with digital post-processing, though.
Partial Phases (>50% covered)
-@ f/8, 1/250 to 1/500 exposures gave good detail of illuminated portion
-@ f/5.6, 1 second gave good exposure of eclipsed portion
-@ f/5.6, 4 seconds over-exposed entire moon
Totality
-My best shot was f/5.6, 4 seconds about 10 minutes after totality
-f/5.6, 2 seconds was OK, but a little dark. OK if you want to digitally post-process
-f/5.6, 10 seconds looked pretty good, but sky motion starts to become a concern
For fun, I tried a 60-second exposure. In 1 minute, the sky rotates about one half of the moon's diameter, yielding a very blurred result unless you're tracking the sky. The result was very bright, but the short answer is, don't bother!
Again, these are just numbers from a single experience...those with DSLRs will have immediate feedback, but maybe the above information will provide some additional input (above and beyond your 2.5" LCD screen). I'll try with a DSLR tomorrow and post results if it's at all clear.
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