I used Oppo’s flagship phone and teleconverter to shoot the lunar eclipse — here’s what I learned

A near-total lunar eclipse occurred last week.

I was on vacation at the time, with no serious camera gear for a few windy and soggy days camping on the southwest-facing Wales coastline in the UK.

However, I had packed the Oppo Find X9 Ultra , together with its 300mm (13x) teleconverter lens.

The eclipse felt like a perfect test for the flagship phone's camera skills.

Where I was and Europe, the maximum 96.2% eclipse took place an hour before moonset / sunrise, meaning the moon would be low in the sky, while in North and South America it was in the middle of the night with the moon higher up.

Having set my alarm for a horribly early hour, I poked my head out of my tent at 4:15am to check on the weather, and was greeted with an enticing view of the eclipse underway in its partial phase, ahead of its maximum.

Excitedly, I threw on some clothes, picked up the Oppo kit and a tripod, and hiked down to the beach to get set up ahead of the eclipse's maximum, which would take place about an hour later.

Clouds covered the moon before I was able to fire up the camera, but I patiently waited.

And despite not being able to see much of the partial phase of the eclipse, fortunately, a break in the clouds meant that I got to see the moon's eclipse at its maximum — and I was able to see what the Oppo kit was capable of.

Recording a 4K video sequence with Dolby Vision of the lunar eclipse, teleconverter attached Tim Coleman And here I'm using the phone's 10x optical camera, with no teleconverter Tim Coleman Setting up for photographing the eclipse with a phone The Oppo Find X9 Ultra is the only current phone with a 10x optical lens (the Galaxy S23 Ultra was Samsung's only previous effort), with a 230mm effective focal length that works pretty well for moon photography by itself.

However, for an even closer view, the teleconverter lens is a better bet.

The teleconverter is a proper add-on lens that's designed to work with the phone's better-quality 3x optical lens, providing a 300mm equivalent focal length.

Oppo notes this as a 13x zoom in the dedicated 'Hasselblad Teleconverter' mode in the camera app, which can be increased to 30x (690mm) or 60x (1380mm) digitally.

You'll need to use a tripod to stabilize the phone, and to capture sharp shots of distant subjects, especially in low light — I used a Heipi 3-in-1 tripod , which includes a dedicated phone clamp within its ballhead.