Supermoon This Weekend

Get ready for the Supermoon!

This is a very unusual moon: The biggest full moon of 2012 called the “supermoon” or perigee full moon, will occur on Saturday. This full moon will be the closest one to Earth for 2012. Astronomers are estimating the supermoon will be around 14 percent brighter and 30 percent bigger than the average full

moon.

Sunday will be as good (or better, or at least different) as a shooting opportunity than Saturday, as it will actually be dark when the moon rises.  Of course you have to take the weather into account.

Friday - set at 5:11 AM, rise at 6:58 PM, sunset at 8:21 PM

Saturday - set at 5:53 AM, rise at 8:12 PM, sunset at 8:22 PM

Sunday - set at 6:42 AM, rise at 9:24 PM, sunset at 8:23 PM

Try to include some other objects in your picture to give some perspective of the size.  This means shooting when the moon comes up or goes down.

When you are photographing the moon, you are really photographing reflected sunlight and therefore you need to manually set your camera with daytime settings.  If you don't, the moon will simply appear as bright disc when you photograph it. If you want to record the surface detail of the moon, you will need to remember the "sunny 16" rule.  This rule tells us that on a bright, sunny day, we can achieve a correct exposure by setting the camera to f16 and the shutter speed to the inverse of the ISO setting. So at an ISO setting of 200, the following combinations should give you correct exposures for the moon.

f 5.6 - 1/1600s, f 8 -1/800s, f11 - 1/400s, f 16 - 1/200s, f 22 - 1/100s"