Super Moon

Messing around with the super moon tonight, I wondered if I could take a picture of the moon with my Nikon D5100 and the two lenses that I own.  My better lens is only a 18-70 mm zoom.  The longer lens is much smaller in its wide open state.  It is a 55-200 zoom, with only f4.5 in its wide open state.  But when you zoom out to 200 then it is f5.6.  That's not very good at all.

So tonight when I put the camera on its tripod at first I tried the smaller focal length lens, but the moon was just a spot on the screen.  It was instantly apparent that I needed the long lens if I was going to do anything at all.

So I switched the lens and went to automatic mode thinking that the moon was now large enough to focus on and set the light...........   WRONG!   I had to go to manual focus as the auto focus just worked and worked without finding a solution.

Even then the photo's were terrible.   Some were just awful but this was about the best I could do.

Using Picasa I was able to crop the photo and that increased its size.  I messed with the exposure but couldn't improve much on the clarity of the shot or the halo effect around the moon.

So it was only when I went to full manual exposure on the camera and dialed up to F11 that I began to get better pictures.  I started to bracket the shutter speed and then look at the pictures on the computer.  Again I have used the Picasa editor to improve the exposure and change the light balance adding more contrast with highlight and shadow.  Finally I had to add a couple of increases in sharpness because my lens is not up to the task at hand.

So what do you think?  I think I still need one of those super expensive 300 mm zoom lenses with about f2.8 lens opening..  But Loyce wants a new refrigerator in the new house so perhaps what  I want isn't too realistic for now anyway.......

Retired Rod