Half Moon Photo - Camera Setup Question..

[Ahmed Shahat]

This photo is taken by a canon 550D camera with 55-250 mm lens. Setup was:

f-stop f5.6
speed 1/250
ISO 400
focal l 250 mm

Are there any better setup for better quality?

Thanks

[peterindb]

Ahmed,

Your moon exposure seems fine. I'm assuming you're asking whether the resolution/sharpness can be improved.

You did not mention whether the camera was handheld or on a tripod.

Any method that minimizes camera shake would help (e.g., tripod, Mirror lock-up, remote trigger), especially at long focal lengths necessary to shoot the moon.

If your zoom lens has image stabilization feature, turn it off whenever your camera's on a tripod....the feature actually promotes a minor blur if the camera is stock-still.

Finally, if you can get your hands on a 400mm or higher focal length lens, you can get a reasonable moon image without having to crop as much and lose detail.

Google "photographing the moon" should get you a lot of web pages with good pointers.

Good luck.

Peter

[MiniChris]

1/100 @ f:11 - works for a full moon; would suspect 1/100 at f:8 or somewhere between 8 and 5.6 would do a half moon plenty well.

[tihsgod]

Do you really need f11 for dof reasons? If not then i think that is too narrow by a stop or two. Of course the dof for a full moon and half moon is the same...

Ahmed, main thing is to stabilize your camera as explained earlier. Use a tripod or find another way to achieve it. I would lower your iso to 200 in that case as you can take a longer exposure. Maybe you could try to shoot at 220mm or something similar. Some lenses don't perform so well at their extremes so it may help with definition a little. As for aperture best way is just take a few shots at different aperture I think you are better just experimenting yourself with settings often that is a better learning experience than just reading about it.

Neil

[JonathanC]

I've been thinking about this for an hour now and I still don't get it.
Why would the brighness of the lit part of the moon change enough to warrant a change in exposure settings?

[tihsgod]

It won't... The exposure will be essentially the same. I meant aperture not exposure when was writing about experimentation... Typo corrected

[MiniChris]

This partial (waxing, I think) moon was shot at f:11, 1/100th on a sigma 70-300 at 230mm, very similar to his exposure..the reason for the f:11 is that this is the sweet spot for this particular lens (where it enjoys its best sharpness). It had nothing to do with dof, but with gaining crispness. There have been quite a number of threads built on this and would be good to archive. I am anxiously awaiting a new full moon so I can test out my Nikkor 55-300 and discover it's best focus point.

[Rasbury]

Love this photo Chris

This partial (waxing, I think) moon was shot at f:11, 1/100th on a sigma 70-300 at 230mm, very similar to his exposure..the reason for the f:11 is that this is the sweet spot for this particular lens (where it enjoys its best sharpness). It had nothing to do with dof, but with gaining crispness. There have been quite a number of threads built on this and would be good to archive. I am anxiously awaiting a new full moon so I can test out my Nikkor 55-300 and discover it's best focus point.

Love this photo Chris.

[MiniChris]

Love this photo Chris

Love this photo Chris.

Thanks, Ron

[Ahmed Shahat]

Gants,

Thanks for your suggestions. I did another trails with different combinations. The best result was reached with the following setup:

F:14, 1/125, ISO 800 and focal length 225 mm.

Which is much better result than the first trial. Do you agree on that?

Next Wednesday [June 15 2011] there will be a full lunar eclipse. It will be clearly recognized from Cairo. I hope that I can catch some photos with this setup for this rare phenomena.