to take a picture of the moon you need-
long lens 1000mm(35mm equivelent) about.
high iso(800?) to force afaster shutter speed.
exposure-the moon, odd as it sounds is hign noon sunlit. just like noon on earth. we are 240000 miles to moon, BUT earth or moon is 93000000 miles to sun. that determines exposure. use sunny 16 rule. that is for a full moon 1/iso at f16. some use a sunny 11 rule for moon. This is called the loony noon rule. then bracket like crazy. shoot a very hign shutter speed to start, take more than 1 shot at each shutter speed(3) then go down to about 1/30sec.
use stong tripod.
use cable shutter release or self timer. if self timer this will take a while, and you will have to keep adjusting moon in viewfinder.
Use mirror lockup if your camera has it.
Turn IS,VR,SR off, your camera is on a tripod.
DO NOT TRUST LIGHT METER IN CAMERA. it is being fooled by all the black sky. even spot meter, if available will not help, it won’t go small enough to get moon only. moon is only 1/2degree wide, smaller than any spot meter.
get away from city. turbulance and lights are bad news.
if 1000mm or so not available, use biggest available. crop in post-processing.
not as good as big lens but will work.
shoot many pics, you can always delete later.
happy moon pics. good luck.
also-
sunny 16 rule-
i/iso is shutter speed. if iso is 100 then shutter speed is 1/100about.
fstop is 16.0.
the f stop is f16. this a starting point. any lens is not at max sharpness at f16, so adjust fstop to f8 or f11, and move shutter acccordingly.
check moonrise times in your area. you want about 3 hours after moonrise to start your pic taking. this gives the moon time to get far enough above the horizon to clear the horizontal atmosphere and turbelance.
you also need crystal clear skys. NO rpt NO haze, clouds, or humidity. humidity is noticable if you have corana around the moon, this could also be haze. in which case shoot on another night.
happy moon pics.
gary
second reply-
on the subject of lenses-
i use the bigma(sigma50-500+1.4converter). a smaller lenses will work, you just have to crop. but, if cropping heavily do not expect a lot of detail, you just won’t get it. though remember any lens is multiplied by the crop factor. so your 135 becomes about 200-205mm.
i shoot at iso800 and at f8.0 end up at about 100th-300th of a sec. when start taking the shot i start at 1/1000 and go down to about a 1/30. i also shoot three shots at each shutter speed, thus increasing the odds of getting a good one somewhere in the bunch. i expect to hit the good shots as stated at about 100th-300th.
do not shoot if high humidity or haze or any kind of atmosspheric turbelence. it just is a waste of memory and time. i shot originally in a park in Detroit michigan on what i thought was a clear night, forget it. i actually got some good pics 200 miles north on the shore of Lake Huron. much better.
0ne thought, if available you can try putting a 2X converter on the lens, that would get to over 400mm. there are also several moon pic takers that use more than i converter. 2 2Xs or a 2X and a 1.4. it sound odd but the results are worth it. they are better than the crop heavy method.
do not underestimate how bright a 3/4 or just under full is in terms of brightness. it equal to highnoon on a cloudless day in the summer.
focus-
put lens on manual focus. then put it on infinity(assuming lens does not focus past infinity,some do) or manual focus.
f16.0 comes from the rule of 16. it is the starting point. if you want f8.0, as i use, then you move the shutter speed accordingly to get back to the EV. it is 1/iso for shutter speed under rule of 16. for f8.0 and iso500, for example, you move 2stops or 1/125. at iso500 the shutter speed is 1/500.
by the way, the above set of instructions work, i just got back from oscoda michigan, i live in detroit, used the same instructions, it worked.
also, with my setup: pentax *istD, bigma50-500 at 500, 2x converter, this gives 35mm equiv of 1500mm. the moon’s size is almost exactly 1/2 of the short side of the frame. in other words, you need all the telephoto power you can get.
” GaryDem, Pentax SLR Talk Forum.