my second attempt at a moon shot, c&c

hawk232 · Jan 16, 2011

well my first attempted resulted in alot of missed focus shots so i abandoned it. here is my second attempt shot on 1/12/2011 F/11, 1/40, ISO: 200

enzodm · Jan 16, 2011

Really not bad, however 1/40 might be slightly long, as the moon is moving (and you too, but I suppose you used a tripod). Try increasing ISO, and perhaps f/8 will help too. The basis is here, since it seems already detailed.

pgriz · Jan 16, 2011

When you are photographing distant object like the Moon, you don't need a high F/stop, unless you are also trying to have something in the foreground be in focus.

The moon is illuminated by the same light source we have on earth - the sun. Therefore, when the moon is high in the sky, and there is little atmospheric absorption, you can start with the same exposure as for sunny daylight (use the sunny 16 rule), and adjust as needed.

The moon is effectively at most lens's infinity focus. So either manually put your lens focus point on infinity (the sideways 8 symbol on the distance scale), or if you have live-view, use that to help acquire a good focus.

Unless you're using a monster lens, the moon will be a rather small part of the frame, and any motion (you, the camera, or the earth/moon) will be visible UNLESS you are using a high shutter speed, or you have the camera on a tripod and are using all the usual tricks at reducing camera shake (turn off the IS/VR, use a remote shutter, use mirror lockup, etc).

Personally, I'm not in favor of increasing the ISO unless you have no other way to get a decent shot. In your situation, your EXIF reports the equivalent of 450mm. This normally will require a shutter speed of at least 1/500 sec if you're shooting handheld, and you're down to 1/40 sec. So I'm guessing that you shot on a tripod. That said, you still have some blurring which I would attribute to camera shake. Your focus appears to be a bit soft, but at this point I'm not sure how much of that is due to focus, and how much to camera shake.

hawk232 · Jan 16, 2011

yes, I was using a tripod and i was using the 2sec timer to fire. thanks for the tips on setting, will have to give it a try again once it clears up!

the way the i achieved these results was strictly experimentation... i just changed one setting at a time and watched what it did to the picture. this one turned out the best of all the shots i took, but that may be by coincidence. i started off with SS of around 125 or so and worked down from there, then started changing f stops. I left ISO constant