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.

Photographing the Super Blue Red Moon (Lunar Eclipse)

The Moon before the eclipse. Tokina 200mm f/3.5 film era lens on an Olympus E-M1 Mark 1 with film era Komura Telemore II 2x magnification teleconvertor.  ISO 200 1/250 (f/8 on the lens, I think)

We've had a fun time trying to shoot the moon.  Some people make the activity look unbelievably easy, others encounter all kinds of difficulties that puzzle them. Here's a retrospective on my technique.

1. Separate the process of aiming vs focussing vs exposure - I use a mirrorless Liveview camera and these modern cameras excel at general photography but shooting the moon is a non standard activity. If you don't separate these concepts in your mind, you end up with a blurry white disc in an expanse of black sky.
2. Put the camera on a tripod. You will be waiting for the moon and taking several shots. I was around for from 11 pm to nearly 2 am so that's a long time to spend holding a heavy long lens pointing up in the sky.  For some gear, turn off image stabilisation if you trust your tripod is very steady and your tripod head to camera mount is rock steady. Some cameras automatically understand they don't need image stabilisation.
3. Use Manual Focus and Manual Exposure and Fixed ISO. See point 1

Aiming

Liveview cameras are usually set to emulate the scene and the exposure - if the exposure is very bright, the liveview will be bright and vice versa if dark. This presents a problem with shooting only the moon (it's different if you want the moon as part of a nightscape). If the camera thinks there is a lot of dark (i.e. the black sky) it will brighten the liveview to the extent that the moon in liveview will be like a blurry, white washed out disc. You don't want that, you can't assess the clarity of focus or anything.

Tip: Set the exposure metering of the camera to spot area. Point the spot at a lit portion of the moon. The camera will attempt to make liveview display that area as 18% grey, suitable for eye judgement and assessment.

Focussing

Now that you can see the moon clearly (see Aiming, above), you can manually focus. If the moon is very small because you do not have a high power telephoto / zoom, you might need to magnify which Liveview cameras often easily do. Toggle Focus Peaking (I like red outlines) - you can outline the edges of the moon with focus peaking colour. Focus Peaking sometimes does not represent perfect focus in general use but the moon is a bright disc in the black sky, it works well.

The moon is not a racing car or a sports player. It does move but not at the speed of lightning. And its distance from you does not change - it traverses the night sky, it doesn't run away or toward you. Once you have achieved focus, except for gear accidents, touching the lens etc... you do not need to change focus. It's essentially at infinity.

Exposure

First to appreciate the significance, read through these B & H articles (highlighted by +Margaret Wong)

• https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/22-tips-for-photographing-a-lunar-eclipse
• https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/14-tips-shooting-moon

The moon will be bright before eclipse. Rule of thumb is the Looney 11. 

All you need is a ballpark figure to set the fixed ISO / shutter speed / aperture on your camera. Remember you are using a digital camera - you can shoot and review exposure almost immediately, then adjust the setting. Of course, you need to know which way on those scales is brighter or darker. But within a few seconds, you can home in on the relevant exposure.

When the moon enters eclipse, the brightness changes a lot because now, the light from the sun is being blocked by the earth. (It's the lunar eclipse, duh!).  In this case, it will be a lot dimmer. You might have to go to ISO 1600 as opposed to Looney 16 when you used ISO 200. You might be down to 1/2 sec exposure time as opposed to 1/200th sec exposure during Looney 16.

Tokina 200mm 1/25sec with stacked Komura TCON X2 and Vivitar TCON X2  ISO 200 (f/3.5 I think) on Olympus E-M1 Mark 1

Be awake to that. It takes like forever to eclipse, then it's suddenly dark and remains dark for 10 or more minutes. If you are not awake to that, you would have left your manual exposure setting on Looney 11.

Tokina 200mm 1/4sec with stacked Komura TCON X2 Vivitar TCON X2  ISO 3200 (f/3.5 I think) on Olympus E-M1 Mark 1

When you figure out that your settings for exposure need brightening, you have to reconcile whether you want to increase ISO (which implies more image noise) or lengthen shutter speed (which risks blur from camera/tripod/moon movement)

Tokina 200mm 1/2sec with stacked Komura TCON X2 Vivitar TCON X2  ISO 3200 (f/3.5 I think) on Olympus E-M1 Mark 1

Then, you wait around until the eclipse clears and it's back to Looney 11

Tokina 200mm 1/15 sec with stacked Komura TCON X2 Vivitar TCON X2  ISO 400 (f/8 I think) on Olympus E-M1 Mark 1

Triggering

Under Looney 11 conditions, you may not need much care in holding the camera steady or triggering. You could even hand hold the camera and lens if you could hold your aim steady enough at such a high magnification. However, when shutter speeds lengthen, you want camera motion to be the least of your worries. You could use a remote control mechanism (wired remote control or camera phone app or tether) or you could just use the 12 second timer built into most cameras. If you are worried about shutter shock or you want even more time for the camera and nervous tripod to reach static state, use the vibration reduction delay built into the camera.

Colour

If you are shooting raw, you can adjust colour easily during post processing. However, you have to remember the colour of the moon. Why not shoot JPEG + Raw so you can easily have a reference. And set the White Balance in the camera to Sunny. Not Auto White Balance which will fade the colours to pale (the camera does not know what colour the moon should be)

But my photo isn't as sharp as I expect - I'm not seeing enough detail

The tips above are to give you a head start, a ballpark result where the moon does not look like a blurred white disc in the sky. If your photo isn't as sharp or as detailed as you expect or some trolls egg you on about, consider:

• How was the atmospheric haze/cloud cover during your shot?
• Have you got the best quality lenses for this type of work - what is their usual sharpness resolving power and micro contrast. What's the next level up in performance and cost? Do you want to pay that for this pursuit? Or maybe you could rent?
• Have you got enough magnification? Speaking in terms of "full frame" sensor, 800mm equivalent focal length is nice to have.
• Have you got enough image light/brightness. An f/2.8 lens would be nice. It does not stay as f/2.8 brightness if you stack on one or two optical teleconverters
• Have you got a really steady tripod/camera/lens combination that does not wobble at the slightest breeze?
• Have you got a sensor that will have low enough noise at ISO 3200?
• If you are using specialised 2000mm mirror lenses which are high magnifying power and suffer from thermal expansion/contraction that affects the focus point, you should be checking your focus more frequently.

Like what you read? Learnt something from it?