Trying to Shoot the Moon Handheld

Last night I wanted to give the moon a shot. With the full moon coming this weekend I wanted to try and get a good moon photo. I thought that it would be best to shoot very late at night as the moon was setting. I let my dog out around 10 last night and noticed that the moon was coming up between some trees. I quickly grabbed my camera to head outside. I grabbed my 60D along with my 300mm lens and the 2x extender. The doubler would give me a reach of 600mm with the lens, and the crop frame body should give me a little extra. I set my focal length to f/5.6 as this is the highest I could get with the doubler. Usually you would not want to set it so high, but with the moon being roughly 240,000 miles away you have a large plane of focus. I was shooting handheld so I wanted a fast shutter speed. I ended up setting my ISO to 640 while shooting with a shutter speed of 1000. I started off much slower, but I kept going up to get more detail in the moon. Shooting the moon is not something that you can to in any auto mode. The bright object in a dark sky will fool your camera. You want to expose for the moon and let the rest go away. I had the moon framed in between two trees, but by the time I exposed the for the moon the trees were long gone. I really learned a lot in a short time outside. Now when the full moon comes I will be ready.

Editing the Photo in Lightroom 5

With a photo like this there is not much to do in Lightroom. I started with a small exposure and highlight adjustment. I was overexposing the image a bit due to the dark conditions outside. Usually you think that your exposure is brighter than it is when you are in a dark room. This is why you should not edit photos in the dark. Last night though I needed to be just a bit darker so I slightly adjusted the exposure and highlights. Going too far with the highlights on a photo like this will discolor it. I also adjusted the temperature to cool it off a bit. I brought it back to the gray moon that we know a little better. The final adjustment was to give a it small crop. Even the long focal length is not enough for the moon.