Moonlight streaming through my bedroom window woke me up at 5 o’clock this morning. I gazed at the full moon, as though dreaming, for a few minutes before the photography-enthusiast in me mentally kicked me in the shins and told me to grab my D90 before it’s too late.
To be very honest, I’ve never photographed the moon before. As in, photograph it properly. So I quickly referred to Mansurovs.Com for a quick primer on how to shoot the moon. [NB: Naseem Mansurov is a photographer based in Colorado, USA who takes photographs of landscapes that make me weak in the knees. He also writes many tutorials and how-to’s in his site, “How To Photograph The Moon” being one of them.]
As Naseem suggested, I set my D90 to the following settings: ISO 200, aperture f/11, shutter speed 1/250. Since it was a full moon, the shutter speed rendered the moon far too bright. So I played around with the shutter speed until I was satisfied with the image that I got.
Here’s the JPG of the best shot that I got — nowhere near Naseem’s jaw-dropping shot but a promising start (I hope!):-
Shot with a D90 and 18-200mm VR II lens, shutter speed: 1/500, aperture: F/11, ISO: 200
I also shot it in RAW but realized too late that Photoshop Elements is too puny to handle that sort of file *sigh*
The elusive full moon made me wish I’m a better photographer…and predictably wished for better zoom lenses, as well ;)
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