How To Take Photos of the Moon

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 - April 25th, 2010 @



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Moon 04222010 at 0807PM

The first thing I want you to remember is that the moon is very bright, therefore nightime exposure isn’t the answer.

Here are some helpful tips:

In photographing the moon, it is a always recommended to use a steady tripod, handheld shot will sometimes work but not recommended. I have no tripod at that time when I took the photo, however it is better the one I took with my Sigma 70-300mm APO DG Macro. I took almost 20 shots and some of them came out good. Next time, I’ll use a tripod.

Requirements:

  • Tripod
  • Lots of Patience
  • Shutter Release Cable (optional)

Steps:

  1. Set ISO to 100
  2. Set your camera’s dial to M (Manual) for best result
  3. Set Aperture to F/8 as base, you can play around with it later and change it to F/10,F/11, see which one will work best for you.
  4. At F/8, I find that the best shutter speed for me is 1/320s. Adjust to a slower shutter speed as necessary.
  5. Don’t forget to set you AF to Center Focusing.
  6. Use your camera’s liveview function if available to focus on your subject.
  7. In Liveview, magnify the subject to 5x or 10x.
  8. Set your lens to MF(manual focus), and use the focus ring to slowly put the subject into focus.
  9. You can also play around with your white balance settings: Shade or Cloudy will give it a warm feeling, tungsten will give it a cool effect. The photo above was taken using Auto White Balance. On the photo on the right, I set the white balance to Tungsten. (or you can do this in post.)

Details of the Photo Above:
Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS with EF 70-210mm F/4 Macro
Exposure: 0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 190 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Here’s are some photos of the Total Lunar Eclipse that took place on Dec. 21, 2010 between 12mn and 5:30am
Here are some of my recent moon shots:

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