So what lens to shoot the moon?

EODK9Trainer

Senior Member
I'm always fascinated by pics of the moon I see people posting. The close up and clarity is just amazing. In reality what lens would I need to get these shots? I'm not talking about the most expensive lens but what kind of lens does one need for this kind of shot?
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Most folks use a 300mm lens... and a tripod... the longer the lens, the more tripod you need... Although, some have very good results using a 300mm+ lens with image stabilization(VR) or Vibration Reduction...
 

nickt

Senior Member
300mm is a good minimum.
Check out the moon thread here. Hover over the pictures and in most cases you can see the exif and see what camera and lens was used. Its a 7 year long thread, so jump around. You can probably find your camera with a 300mm.
https://nikonites.com/low-light-and-night/2361-moon-shots.html?highlight=moon#axzz5JpOxJIp1

Its important to get as sharp as possible so you can crop a bit to get closer. The moon is bright and moves fairly quickly, so no slow exposures.
 

nickt

Senior Member
I went through my old pics and found this taken with the Tamron 70-300 SP lens. Not my best but shows what you could expect with a 300.

This is cropped and processed. Looking back, maybe too much.
D71_0463.jpg


This is the untouched original:
D71_0463-2.jpg
 

WayneF

Senior Member
You can of course crop your moon image much more tightly, to eliminate the blank black space.

There is a calculator at https://www.scantips.com/lights/stars.html

It is for computing blur trail of longer stellar exposures on a fixed mount. The moon is lighted by direct sun, and needs only more normal daylight exposures, so that is not really applicable here, BUT the last lines of this calculator result is like:

Angular dimension for this sensor and lens:
4.1253 arcseconds per pixel, 873 pixels per degree (if < 10°)

The image dimension in degrees is valid for any exposure time, but varies with focal length and sensor size. But it does show what object size to expect with the focal length AND SENSOR SIZE (both mm and pixels). This text example above is a 200 mm lens and a 24 megapixel DX sensor. The image example below is a FX sensor.

The moon size is 0.5 degrees, so in this text example result of 873 pixels per degree, the moon would be half that size in the image, which is a small image, but still perhaps suitable for video monitor viewing.

This image is a 600 mm lens on D800 (36 megapixel FX): f/8, 1/200 second, ISO 320.
The motion blur trail of 0.005 seconds is negligible (0.02 pixels in this case).
The Moon's reflectivity (albedo) is 12%, so it should look middle gray dark, not white.

moon.jpg
 
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EODK9Trainer

Senior Member
I have two capable of zooming. The AF-S Nikkor 55-300 1:4.5-5.6G ED(VR) which I've never had much luck in using with moon shots but no doubt it's likely me. I've just started getting some advice from a pro so I can learn how to use my camera. I also just bought a Tamron 18-400 F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD but I have not tried it out yet and didn't believe this was even capable. I have a small valley behind my home in the Shenandoah Valley and the hawks and other large birds love to ride the thermals back here so the 300 was used for that. But of course when most all shots are auto I'm only doing so much.
 

nickt

Senior Member
Either of those lenses should get you a decent moon shot. 600 would be nicer, but you have plenty to play with there. If you used auto, then that was the problem. Not that auto is bad, but a moon shot is one of those reasons not to use auto. The camera will never get it right, you'll likely get a washed out blurry moon with auto.
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
Yes, I also highly recommend you get out of auto as soon as possible. Auto is OK for snapshots of your family at thanksgiving or your kids or dogs running around the back yard, but for much else, forget auto, especially for moon shots (and even your bird shots).
 

STM

Senior Member
I use my "Beast", my 600mm f/4 AIS Nikkor, TC-300 teleconverter and my D7100 on a gimbal head and preferably my heavy duty Bogen tripod. With the crop factor, that is 32x. It seems to work ok!

crescent moon.jpg
 

EODK9Trainer

Senior Member
Nice shot there. I did get a decent shot during the day of the moon but I was so shaky I was surprised it came out. It was with the Tamron 18-400.
 

mrcoomes59

Senior Member
33556c354f5b40bd26723591d8e26790.jpg

This was taken with a sigma 150-600, handheld. The moon is bright so you can use a fast shutter speed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

crycocyon

Senior Member
Although now I have bigger guns, recently I shot the moon with an inexpensive Pentax 6x7 300mm lens mounted with an adapter to my Nikon D850. After cropping etc here's the image. I agree that 300mm is a bare minimum. This was handheld in manual mode. The moon is so bright that you can get away with such short duration shutter speeds.

_DSC1558.jpg

Here's the original photo without Adobe Lightroom work done to it. It's a jpeg copy of the NEF file. So you can see the size of the moon at 300mm and what you can achieve with 46 MP cropping.

_DSC1558original.jpg

Of course now I have the Nikon 400mm f2.8 AI-S and 800mm f5.6 AI-S with TC-14B and TC-301 coverters so I'm very much looking forward to a clear night to test these. :D
 

Dawg Pics

Senior Member
33556c354f5b40bd26723591d8e26790.jpg

This was taken with a sigma 150-600, handheld. The moon is bright so you can use a fast shutter speed.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi, I was looking through this thread and always liked this image. How do you process the moon to get so much color in it? I have seen a hint of color in mine, but nothing like this.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Hi, I was looking through this thread and always liked this image. How do you process the moon to get so much color in it? I have seen a hint of color in mine, but nothing like this.

Just guessing but I'm thinking this is a combination of white balance and color artifacts during processing. Depending on if they used burn/dodge tools at some point that could have amplified the color as well in later steps. The pixelated darker colors on the edge of the shadow has me convinced it more a part of post than anything natural.
 

Dawg Pics

Senior Member
Just guessing but I'm thinking this is a combination of white balance and color artifacts during processing. Depending on if they used burn/dodge tools at some point that could have amplified the color as well in later steps. The pixelated darker colors on the edge of the shadow has me convinced it more a part of post than anything natural.

Thank you. I like some of the images that have some brown color in them. Processing magic. I am still learning. Probably alway will be.
 

Hobbit

Senior Member
depending on my mood its either my 30-700, or my 150-600C and if im feeling upto it the beast - the beast is a T-ring convertor and a 102mm F9 telescope on a tracked mount, not that you need tracking for the moon
 
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