Description

The crescent moon setting over a ridge in Mojave National Preserve in Southern California. I like how you can sometimes see the dark side of the moon as the crescent moon is setting.

This shot really pushed my camera to its limits. I used a 70-200mm lense with a 2X teleconverter, which shifts the widest aperture from f/4 to f/8.0, and requires manual focus. Setting the maximum regular ISO of 1600 yielded a shutter speed of 2.5 seconds, about the longest you can take at this zoom and not get too much smear as the moon moves.

The RAW file had a lot of noise, but using noise reduction before and after scaling the image down to 840 x 600 resolution hides it pretty well.

I wanted to catch the moon silhouetted behind a Joshua tree, but by the time I got up the road and took that shot, the moon was too low and dim and using the extended ISO setting of "H", I couldn't get the moon without too much noise and an exposure that resulted in too much motion. I'll attempt more

Exif: F Number: 8, Exposure Bias Value: 1.00, ExposureTime: 25/10 seconds, Flash: did not fire, compulsory flash mode, ISO: 1600, White balance: Auto white balance, FocalLength: 400.00 mm, Model: Canon EOS 40D