New Moon

New Moon at ~30% visibility
 
I have photographed the moon more than once, but I always waited until full moon to get my photo equipment out. This was nice, but the contrast on the surface was not very spectacular. I noticed that the craters showed much more detail when they were in the shadow/light border, so I waited until there was a half moon and a clear sky. At the evening of November 7 2005 the sky was clear enough to take good photos. I firmly held the camera in position while it rested on a stable surface and some support under the tripod foot to get the right shooting angle and used MLU to avoid camera/lens shake. I made several exposures and picked the best one. After all to get a perfectly exposed moon with the nicest possible contrast you have to experiment a bit.

Photo by Frank Panis

Shooting Data:
 
Camera: Nikon D2x
Lens: AF-S 300mm f/2.8D IF-ED with TC14E-II
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/10s - f8
Flash:none
Image: RAW, converted in Nikon Capture 4.3.2  

Almost full moon

Yet another shot of the moon, taken further south with another long telephoto lens. This photo was taken in the morning, just before the sunrise using a manually set exposure for broad daylight. Although the exposure differs greatly from the one used by Frank above, still the results are almost identical, except from the slight yellow tint in my picture which is probably due to the rising sun. Using speeds over 1/1000 sec is absolutely necessary when hand holding a lens like this one. I experimented with all the speeds in the 1/1000 - 1/ 2000 sec range and chose this one since it was the one which needed the least editing.

Photo by George J. Reclos

Shooting Data:

Camera: Nikon D2X
Lens: Nikkor ED 500mm f/4 P
Sensitivity: ISO 100
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/1600 sec - f/4, Manual mode
Flash: SB-800 in i-TTL
Image: JPEG edited in Photoshop CS2, levels adjusted, smart sharpening added and resized. 

Morning moon shot

This morning right before sunrise we had a very clear sky with no atmospheric distortions. These were the perfect conditions for shooting the moon with a really long lens: 1530mm equivalent on a D300 which is not very easy to use. Fortunately this lens has a fantastic VR function which allows shooting at very low shutter speeds. With this shot I "only" needed 1/400s though. The image was processed and resized in CNX2 The most important edit steps were contrast enhancements and a slight desaturation.

Photo by Frank Panis

Shooting Data:

Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 600mm f/4G ED VR with TC17E-II
Sensitivity: ISO 200
Shutter speed - aperture: 1/400s - f9
Flash: none
Image: RAW, converted in Nikon Capture NX 2.1.0