Shooting the Moon

I've been taking some time lately to practice taking pictures of the moon. I've been reading up on the settings for a camera, and reading the manual for my camera  (I know - SACRILEGE - a man reading the instructions - oh well.)  I started last month when we had the harvest super-moon and I wanted to get some pictures.  I had actually tried for the super-moon before that - but all I got were white circles against a black background.

So, for August I did some research and was able to get some detail in the shots.

Not too bad for my first attempt to do more than just set the camera on automatic and hope for a good shot. I've started manually setting the speed and aperture.

I was able to get out again last week to try a crescent moon. It required different setting because there was a lot less light being reflected.

With the terminator line (where the light ends) it's easier to see more details because of the longer shadows (it's sunrise along that line and the shadows are at their maximum.) These were taken after dark so there is very little color to capture, just the white light of the sun reflected off the moon's surface. These were taken from a tripod so that it would be more stable than me trying to hold the camera. I was also using a 2 second delay to let me push the button and let go so that the camera could be still when the picture was actually taken.

Earlier this week I went out before twilight to get some more pictures of the half moon in a light sky. I had problems because the light sky did not allow the crispness of detail I wanted on the moon's surface.  I ended up using a small aperture to darken the background and sharpen the moon's surface details. Also taken from a tripod with a 2 second delay.

I was able to get details, again with the most right at the terminator line, but I also got more color than the shots after it was dark.  I'm still experimenting with the exposure time and aperture setting, but I'm trying to keep track of what I'm doing so that I can understand the differences in the results. I'm also paying more attention to the image properties before I do any post processing, just trying to learn how the settings create the final image. I'm also getting past the need to take 20 shots to get 2 good ones.