I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you....

I've shot the moon a few times, over the years, without that burning passion that I see others seem to muster. Previously, I used manual focus legacy film lenses on mirrorless digital bodies, this time, I decided to be more laid back and just used an autofocus lens on the mirrorless body.

There are lots of articles on how to shoot the moon, it's not difficult but the technique depends on the body you use, liveview or optical viewfinder.  One article I came across before I wrote these notes is on the Photography Life website.

Robin Wong has a Youtube video which is pretty concise:

Here's my take.

Gear

Assumption:  We're using  mirrorless cameras. For the photo above, I'm using an Olympus OM-D E-M1 (but other mirrorless cameras should be similar)

Assumption: We're using a modern, compatible autofocus, electronic aperture controlled lenses. For the photo above, I'm using an older Sigma Four Thirds 50-500mm zoom lens.

You will want a lens with some "reach" - typically 600mm (full-frame equivalent).

The sharper your lens (meaning bigger, heavier, more expensive), the better.

Exposure: Shutter Speed

The regular moon (not an eclipse), has a similar exposure to a cow standing in the field yonder, in daylight. This may be surprising because we think it is at night and it should be dark. Well, the surrounding sky is dark, but the moon itself is on the receiving end of direct sunlight, so we can think of the moon as a subject in daylight.  The classic exposure rule is Looney 11.

Assumption: This is a regular moon, not stages of an eclipse where the light will change. In general, the light will be mostly steady for many minutes or longer.

Action: It does not matter whether you use P A S or M if the light doesn't change and your actual time for the shot is Looney 11 brightness - once you or the camera has chosen the exposure time setting (a fraction of a second)  it can stay for many shots. Heck, you can use Beginner's Full Auto. However, using M on Liveview systems has an issue, read on....

Exposure: f/no and ISO sensitivity

Since we are assuming Looney 11 brightness, you should easily be able to use the native ISO of your camera sensor - for my camera, that would be ISO 200.  Of course, the f/no you choose would be one to optimise the sharpness of your lens - usually not the brightest f/no and certainly not an f/no such that you get diffraction.

Should you use a Tripod?

Assuming Looney 11 brightness and a reasonable choice for shutter speed, you don't need a tripod unless you can't hold the camera steady enough to compose and click. Remember, you may not be used to shooting at 600mm / 1000mm (or more) equivalent, holding the lens and camera vertically. A tripod will take the pressure of finishing the job quickly so that you can relax and enjoy yourself.

If you do use a tripod, bring a torchlight since you may not used to fiddling with that ungainly obstinate thing. Fumbles in the dark could cause you to drop all that precious gear.

When LiveView works against you

With Liveview cameras normally, the screen or EVF shows you a brightness forecasr of the scene before you click. In this case however, there is a lot of night sky in our scene so the Liveview calculation will overcompensate and try to make the night sky brighter by increasing the Liveview brightness. This will make the moon a very bright featureless white blob.

My Olympus cameras have a menu item named Liveview Boost. That doesn't appear to help in this case. Here, we're having a hard time seeing the moon with the expected textures. It's a viewing issue not an exposure issue.

I chose:

• Aperture Priority (which will automatically handle the Exposure issue)
• ISO 200 (not Auto ISO) for low image noise
• f/5.6 or 8 (typically) , for good sharpness and reduced flare
• Spot Metering Pattern
• Single AF (Auto Focus) centre point 
• raw instead of jpeg so that you have the option of adjusting the white balance later on.

The moon will now appear as a defined, textured disc and the forecast exposure will be as you see.  Feel free to adjust Exposure Compensation to taste.

Choosing and off-centre AF point

If are going to focus and recompose (i.e. move the moon away from the centre of your view), you need to find a way of locking the exposure when you do that. There's a feature on cameras called AEL (Auto Exposure Lock). Otherwise, the moon will go all white again when you recompose. 

If your camera model automatically moves the Spot Meter point to coincide with the off-centre AF point, you don't have to use AEL for off-centre AF points. 

Autofocus on Mirrorless Systems

With autofocus lenses on mirrorless systems, lenses are often focus-by-wire. That means there is no hard-stop at an etched infinity mark like on a classic manual focus lens. There is also no spot on the lens barrel that you can tape or "hold" the focussing ring, still.

If you decide to manual focus a modern lens on mirrorless dystems, you can manually turn the focus ring, use Magnification in Liveview to see when the focus is best. Let go of the ring and it should stay like that. 

With a bright moon, it is just as easy or easier to just use the Autofocus on a Single AF point. Remember, the moon is not dark and the autofocus system is competent enough to do the job.