That’s the problem with driving home on clear nights. Just gotta take one more picture of the spectacular moon in the night sky.

Quite a few emails over the transom on the techniques for shooting moons, especially questions on how to expose to get detail on the orb itself.

As with any shots that require time exposures, the secret is a lot of trial and error. The moon rises and sets quickly in the nighttime sky so any exposure over 15 seconds is going to result in a blur. I try spot metering on both the moon and the foreground and then usually bracket my shots two or three f-stops on either side of a metered exposure.

This shot was metered on the moon itself but the exposure selected is two f-stops overexposed. I used Photoshop to restore detail to the moon.

For the techies, the shot was taken with a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II digital SLR (16.7 megapixels) with a Canon L-Series 85mm f/1.2 Ultrasonic lens. Exposure was 11 seconds at f/8 at ISO 400.