Back at the beginning of the month, I had the opportunity to photograph the December 3 supermoon here in Port Stanley. I kept an eye on the weather forecast starting on December 1 and scouted a number of locations ahead of time. I found The Photographer’s Ephemeris application on my iPad and iPhone to be invaluable in planning the shot. TPE’s artificial-reality mode on the iPhone is pretty cool, allowing you to see where the moon (or sun) will rise. I used TPE to frame the moon over the hill on the east side of the harbour.
I used my standard setup: my Manfrotto tripod and a Nikon ML-L3 Wireless Remote Control (Infrared). My Nikon D7000 had my 18mm-200mm zoom lens at its longest zoom (200 mm) to make the moon as large as I could. (Afterwards I remember I had a longer lens back in the house which would have made the moon 50% bigger; next time).
Following the advice in this article, I set up aperture at f/11, my ISO at 400 and adjusted the shutter speed to expose the moon at different levels. My favourite photo of the shoot had a shutter speed of 1/4 sec. It was a bit too long to get good detail on the moon surface but it backlit the trees well.
Camera: Nikon D7000
Lens: Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
Focal Length: 200 mm
Exposure: 1/4 sec at f/11.0
ISO Speed Rating: ISO 400
It was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours and I learned how I would approach shooting my next supermoon.
