Moon over Lake Ontario

Posted on May 27, 2010 by The Lazy Photographer

So last night I happened to step into my backyard and noticed an almost full moon rising just over the horizon. I quickly gathered my gear and drove over to Rosetta Mclean Park (one of the nicest in Scarborough) to snap some shots. In the first photo you can see the moon reflecting in the water and the lights of a small aircraft cutting through the sky (due to the long shutter speed). The second photo was taken later, once it got dark. The first was shot with my 17-50mm Tameron lens and the second with my 55-250mm Canon lens. The second photo has been cropped. Both were shot with my tripod and with the image stabilization off. Sadly, I did catch a plane flying straight through one of my many moon shots but it was slightly out of focus. Oh well.

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10 Responses to Moon over Lake Ontario

  1. lynnwiles says:
    May 28, 2010 at 10:06 pm

    Great moon shots Dave, makes me wish I’d get over my tripod phobia some day.

  2. Jan Smith says:
    May 28, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    I love the second shot…what are the settings that you use to get the detail?

    • davecandoit says:
      May 29, 2010 at 7:27 am

      Thanks Jan.
      If I recall, you’re shooting with a Canon, too, right?
      Turn off your Auto Lighting Optimizer, Image Stabilization and Auto Focus.
      Switch your meter to spot, and meter off the moon face.
      Lock your ISO to 100.
      Switch your shooting mode to 2 second timer, or to continuous shooting timer. I used the continuous shooting timer and had the camera fire off 10 shots. This way I could be sure the last couple of shots were movement free.
      If you have live view, switch to it and use the 10x zoom to get really close to the moon.
      Now manual focus off the live view image.

      That’s about it. Ideally, if you have a remove timer, you can forgo the 2 second timer on the camera.

      As for aperture, I used F6.3, which set the shutter to 1 second. If I did it again I’d probably try F8, since F8 aperture is where my lens is the sharpest. You could go to F2.8, which would shorten the shutter speed a few stops, but I have no idea if that would make the depth of field too shallow. I wouldn’t go smaller than F8, though, since this will increase your shutter time and possibly introduce unwanted noise.

      If the moon is too bright or not bright enough, just adjust your exposure compensation (Ev) accordingly until you get what you want.

      Hope this helps.

  3. davecandoit says:
    May 29, 2010 at 7:28 am

    LOL, you’ll be fine, Lynn. The tripod opens the door to a whole new set of photographs — night photography. And macro photography, if that interests you.

  4. uncoveringyou says:
    May 31, 2010 at 9:46 am

    I have a love affair going with the moon…you have captured her well in that second shot… :):):)

  5. y says:
    June 9, 2010 at 8:52 pm

    wow, how did that little lens take such a brilliantly sharp shot of the moon?

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