Photography Phridays 02.22.19

A quick an simple guide to capturing pictures of the moon or really any bright object in the dark!

The moon not in focus, but look is pretty cool!

Disclaimer,I don’t really have too much experience with astro-photography, but as an enthusiast I am always willing to learn and try! These are some of the techniques I used to get super up close shots of the moon.

Big ass lens

My two must haves are to get a long telephoto lens and a tripod. Any tripod will do as long as it can stand up and isn’t made of paper mache. For the lens you’ll need is a minimum focal length of 200 mm the aperture or f stop doesn’t matter because to get maximums sharpness the aperture will be set manually to f11. Also shoot in manual or aperture priority mode it will help control the sharpness and light transmission.

roughly about 100 ish mm f11 efs 75-300 with .71 speed booster on em 1 mark ii

The image above was a little under 200mm with a speed-booster( adds more light and reduces focal length). Shooting micro 4/3 still yielded a nice image and this is why I prefer the m4/3 setup for reach as it provides a x2 crop even though I added a speed-booster ( The only adapter I had). To reduce the super bright light of the moon set the shutter speed to around 1/125 and shoot at the lowest iso to reduces noise. I shot at iso 64 with its extended low range on my Em1 mark ii for a cleaner shot.

at 213mm this is about the minimum telephoto length

Using a tripod is a must as it allow you to keep the camera stable. A 50$ amazon tripod will work with some creaks and plasticky bits will work although I would be careful with a super heavy lens. A flip out screen will make the task much easier to view but is not necessary. The next part is focusing manually while taking test shot to make sure the image is sharp or to your liking.

some light room adjustment and cropping and boom!

At the very least keep an open mind and play around with the settings. The fun aspect of this kind of photography is taking the time recompose and the achievements getting that shot in your head! TLDR to take a picture of the moon is a tripod, <= to 200 mm lens, f11, and 1/125 the rest is patience and elbow grease!Cheers and Happy snapping