Moon Photography: Moon Photo Come Back

Here in Ontario, Canada, we have been granted a Family Day, meaning one Monday off work for the month of February. It was nice, as myself and my husband were renovating one of the rooms, and we would laugh that we were building a family.

Now, I guess it's time for the latest moon photo shot. It's been a while since my last showcase. Well, I want to publish at least one photo, especially before the lunar eclipse on February 20, 2008. With my best luck this winter, I am not sure if I will be able to see anything, but I am hoping that I will. This winter so far, we have had many overcast nights, followed either by rain or snow, and then some cold. I hope that Bob from Blackholes and Astrostuff will be able to showcase his lunar eclipse experience for us, as he got himself a nice Canon 40D camera. BTW, I will try to resume my blogging in a couple of days; it seems like a lot of work is piling up from all ends.

Aurora, Ontario, Feb 13, 2008, 10:55 PM EST

UPDATE: I was in a rush last night and forgot to mention something. I usually wait for the full moon, but recently I have discovered that by taking crescent, half moon, or not-so-full moon photos, I can get more spectacular photos. The shadow on the moon brings up or better defines all the craters or surfaces of the moon, as opposed to the full moon, which at some times can look very flat.

Lastly, David Leonard just asked in one of the first comments for this post if I have any tricks to take moon photos. All the tricks are presented in this post from last year: How To Take Photos of the Moon. However, since then, I have refined my technique and eliminated the tripod. This is not because I don't need any more, but because I don't have the time to set it up every time. For those who have a DSLR camera (with a zoom lens at least 75-300mm or 100-400mm or more) or a regular camera with some zooming capability, the zoom may be 12x, and there is definitely an option to change settings. The trick is to switch your METERING MODE to PARTIAL. You can keep the ISO at 200; anything higher will make your image grainy. Also, I keep my settings in P mode, a mode where Av and Tv are automatically adjusted by the camera. Oh, and don't forget, clear skies do help, something we don't have control over.

I also made slight adjustments to the moon photos. Canon cameras are known to take photos with a more smooth finish to represent more film camera image quality rather than sharper, and this is due to the CMOS sensor type as opposed to the CCD image sensor. So for those who like a bit sharper images, at the bottom of this post, "How To Take Photos of the Moon," there is an explanation on how to sharpen your image accordingly using Unsharp Mask (in Adobe Photoshop, Elements, and some other software with that option), as opposed to using a sharpening tool that can make your image look more digitized.

~ Anna