Supermoon

sunbeam_63

What are the best settings for the supermoon tonight?

bruto

Right about now I've got my camera on a tripod aimed at it waiting for the eclipse. I'm using a manual focus 500mm lens, ISO 100, manual mode with aperture at f/11 and shutter speed around 1/300 to 1/400. The shutter speed must vary as brightness does, but this looks as if it's giving a pretty decent exposure. The moon is very bright tonight. I'll probably have to lower this as the eclipse closes in.

Remember you must manually focus, as most lenses these days go past infinity, and the moon is hard to hit with AF. You might be able to meter in spot mode, but most metered exposures will overexpose.

My main issue with all this is getting the focus right. My Nikon D3200 is not a very good manual focuser, and the preview is not very good for double checking. I'll find out in a while, I guess.

e.t.a. eclipse has started (it's about 9:15 here) and shutter speed is looking more like 1/250 now, and likely to go slower soon.

bruto

I ended up going from 1/300 at f/11 and ISO 100 down to something like 1/2 second at f/4 and ISO 400 when the eclipse was full. When the eclipse was partial it was very hard to get any of the darkened moon without blowing out the bright edges. The moon is a harsh mistress indeed!

Here's a quick one out of the camera: this was shot at ISO 400, 1/2 second, and F 4.5 at near the darkest point of the eclipse, using a Nikkor 500/F4 AIP lens. Hard to hold this baby steady even on a good tripod.

http://jmp.sh/jnR75Hf