Project365 - Shoot the Moon

Introduction

We went to Costco (or CostMO ! as I call it) this evening, and couldn't help noticing how bright & beautiful the moon was tonight. A nice easy subject to get the fundamentals down. No strobes, not gobos, no snoots.

Setup

Camera - Canon 60D, Lens - Canon 100-300mm f/4, Teleconverter - Canon 1.4X, Tripod - Manfrotto 190CX Pro 3, cable shutter release

The setup is straightforward, but for my long lens, the tripod & cable release are an absolute must ! I need to be able to keep the camera VERY still...

Photos

For the record, these are not black & white pictures. Shooting the Moon is a grey disk in a black sky. I wonder if shooting in monochrome would have affected the pictures ? But that's for a future shoot...

Shooting the moon is actually counter-intuitive. You're out in the dark, shooting into the sky. You think to yourself "I need to capture lots of light - open the aperture wide, and have long exposures. And this is what happens when you do !

Here's a better example - aperture down to f/22, ISO 100, and about 1/10th of a second. Now if only I had noticed the wind was waving the branches in the tree ! Time to move the tripod...

Just for giggles, I messed with the settings to try a long exposure. This is at 30 seconds. Can you hear the sensor starting to sizzle in the camera ? While I lost all the details of the moon, I do like the ghosted tree branch and the little bit of lens flare beside the moon.

This is the more traditional shot of the moon. You can see some detail, but I really need a much bigger lens in order to see craters & such.

Lessons Learned

I was right to follow my instincts. I took one look at the moon & said "that's really bright !", which was what attracted me to it. The setup was straightforward, and I got down to business right away. Then I had some fun playing with long exposures & such.