There are a few challenges to folks who take on "Shooting the Moon" as a significant part of their hobby!

First and most obvious is your gear -- having a camera/lens combo that will be capable of delivering good crisp shots of a subject so far away that it requires both a long focal length/lens that can get sharp, fine detail.

Second, of course, is technique: a good tripod and knowing how to use your "kit" to get a good exposure and focus...it's pretty straightforward, but still has a bit of a learning curve. For example, I have over the years adopted a "rule of thumb" for exposing for the moon, it's been called the "Lunar 11" rule, meaning that if you set your aperture to f/11 thane set your shutter speed for 1/[ISO value] then you will come out with an exposure that doesn't look totally bright and shiny (like we "visually" see it) but that is "toned down" enough so that all sorts of detail shows up. My settings (with a tripod and cable shutter release) are f/11, ISO 100 and 1/100 sec. shutter speed. Using my 100-400mm lens that shutter speed would be way too slow, which is why I use a tripod! The ISO 100 allows for a maximum degree of image quality, assuming my exposure is good!

Focusing is a whole other matter! Unless you have a real long (expensive) lens, then the moon will only take up a small bit of the frame, typically the center "bit". And then, with a long focal length, you have to initially "hunt" for the moon, which means loosening up the tripod and "swinging" your camera/lens, and at a 400mm focal length that means two problems: first it's hard to "spot" that little moon and second even if you do spot if the view in the viewfinder is very susceptible to a little shaking, and also getting your center focus point to land and lock relaiability on the little dang moon is, well, challenging.

Well, all this is really just background for the two focuses of this "challenge"...

It may interest you to know that for many of us photographer "enthusiasts" who have taken up "Shooting the Moon" as a "significant" part of the hobby, shooting the Full moon is actually less satisfying than shooting a "partial" moon. This is because the partial moons have an area of deep shadow across some portion of the moon. In the area at the edge of the shadow, the "transition" area, details, like edges of crater and other surface irregularities, catch the light in a way that cast a shadow, showing the details of those edges in clear, crisp ways, assuming your gear and technique can "capture" that detail. In the first shots of this page I post shots that I hope will illustrate this, first from a few Full moon shots from this Tuesday, November 27, and then for comparison several partial moon shots with different degrees of shade and shadow detail. I hope that the distinction will be evident, since the full moon shots show no shadows, since by nature they have the sunlight shooting straight down on the surface.

Second, on the full moon night there were patches of clouds around the moon. This interested me, because the clouds were plainly visible to the eye, and yet I knew that getting an exposure "for the moon" would totally underexpose the clouds, and yet getting an exposure "for the clouds" would seriously overexpose the moon. This is not so much a problem if you are shooting in "daylight" or early dusk conditions, but as it gets to be night this is a problem.

So, I decided to take several shots of different exposures, starting with my "for the moon" exposure then increasing the exposure bit by bit. The problem I ran into was the fact that in this region there is so much moisture in the air that I pretty much failed from the start, but you may be interested in some of the stuff I came out with!

The takeaway is that when it comes to this type of thing, the human eye is much better at "capturing" the high dynamic range than our typical cameras are!

It's possible that I'm missing something, though...

So, without further ado...: