Moonset, Sunrise
Posted by Avital Pinnick on December 11, 2011
I missed last night’s lunar eclipse. I had no idea that it was going on until I saw some of my Flickr friends post their eclipse photos. 😦
I got up this morning at 6 a.m. and saw that the moon was close to setting, so I took a couple photos. I was surprised how well manual focus worked. I tend to use my right eye to look through the camera, which is odd because my left eye sees much more clearly. So I switched eyes and it was much easier to focus. I don’t think I could ever switch over completely to using my left eye but it’s good to know that it helps with focusing! The first photo was underexposed in order to show the details of the moon. It was actually quite light by this time, although the sun hadn’t yet cleared the horizon. I used a 55-250mm lens at 220mm, handheld.
About half an hour after moonset, the sun rose. I took this photo with a point-and-shoot (Canon PowerShot S95) while on my morning run. I retouched it slightly to get ride of a plane that happened to be flying by. A point-and-shoot doesn’t allow very tight apertures. I was only able to stop it down to f/8, but it was sufficient to create a little sunflare between the buildings of Nofei Sele, Maale Adumim.
Marlene Missick said
Excellennt shot!
Would you share some info on the type of camera,lense, and setting your used.
We have the same Canon Rebel XSi.
Thank you in advance,
Avital Pinnick said
For the moonset photo, there’s not a whole lot to it. A full moon is much brighter than you think, so you have to really underexpose it if you want to get details. Also, you have to use a short exposure because the moon is moving fairly quickly, relative to the earth. A long exposure (anything longer 1/8 second) will get you motion blur. If you click on the photo itself, it will take you to the Flickr page where you can read the all the EXIF data by clicking on the camera model. Briefly, I used 1/125 sec, f/5.6, 220mm (cropped slightly), and ISO 100. I shot in manual mode. White balance was auto. Hope this helps. A tripod is best but I was lazy.
tinebeest said
1) I also missed the eclipse. I looked at the moon and thought “Oooh nice, a big full fat moon!” but I am not as plugged in as I used to be with the astronomy crowd!
2) I have always aimed the camera with the left eye, ever since I picked one up. I am right-handed but clearly I am left-eyed. What makes you feel you couldn’t switch over completely? Just wondering.
Avital Pinnick said
It just feels odd using my left eye, but I’ll give it a try! Would probably reduce the nose smudges on my screen. 🙂
deanna7trees said
magnificent pics.
Avital Pinnick said
Thanks, Deanna!
Marlene Missick said
Your shots are amazing. Another request, could you send the settings for taking pics of the sun withe the spikes? You advised about a year ago and I took some really good shots. I haven’t used the canon in about a yearand I forgot. Thank you in advance. Marlene- Shutterbug member
Avital said
Hi, Marlene, Thanks! To get sunflares (those spiky photos of the sun), you need a very small aperture. On a DSLR it’s easy to set the aperture to f/16 or f/22. The photos you saw were taken with a point-and-shoot, so the smallest aperture I could set was f/8, but it was sufficient. This will work with any camera, not just Canon. Good luck!