27 Sept 2015

27 Sep 15 - The Super Moon

With all the interest about the Red Moon being seen following the lunar eclipse in the early hours of 28 Sep 15, I thought that before I got up in the middle of the night for some photos, I had better get a better idea of the settings for photographing subjects like the Moon at night. So once the Moon had risen & it had become suitably dark, then I took the camera into the garden for thirty minutes. It only took a couple of shots to confirm that I needed to be using the 400 mm lens rather than the 15-85 lens. It was obvious I needed to be photographing using the tripod & on a 2 second time delay as I don't have a remote cable. Next I tried varying the exposure settings & quickly confirmed I needed to under expose the photo by five stops. Finally, there was the AWB setting which adjusts the photo for the type of background light, including sunny, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent light etc. This changed the base colouration of the Moon, but in the end I switched back to the Auto setting, which seemed the most natural. Finally, I was able to look at ISO settings & I was surprised to find I could put the ISO as low as 100 & still photograph the Moon on 1/100 second when the 400mm lens was on its widest aperture of F5.6. But then I was underexposing the photo by five stops.
Super Moon: A Super Moon is when the Moon gets to its closest point to the Earth. This photo was taken at 20:12 with the Canon 7D Mark II & 400mm F5.6 lens, on ISO 100 & 1/100 second & underexposing by five stops. The photo has been cropped & sharpened, but no other changes made
Super Moon: The level of detail on a larger crop is quite impressive
Super Moon: Another photo with the same settings, except I changed the White Balance Bracketing to -3. I don't really understand what this setting is changing, but it does seem to have subtly changed the colour tone & the level of detail
Super Moon: Again a larger crop of the last photo