Hand Held Moon Shots

Today I discovered that my new apartment's lounge windows offer a great viewing spot for the moon on those rare days when it is not covered by Gothenburg's near-permanent grey clouds. Having missed the once-in-four-hundred-years alignment of Jupiter and Saturn yesterday due to cloud cover, I thought I would at least shoot the moon when she broke through the clouds.

Moon at 1/80, f11 ISO1000

I discovered the plate for my tripod had gone missing somewhere in the move and was not in any of the places I would expect to have put it. That left me hand-holding the 5D, 100-400mm lens & 2x extender. A situation that ideally would have you at 1/800th of a second but, shooting the moon, you'd be searching for something closer to 1/30th with an f8-f11. The weight also made the manual focusing a real challenge.

Moon at 1/125, f11 ISO640

All this aside, I'm quite happy with two photos of fifty or so I took this evening. I enjoy taking photos of the moon, though I don't make enough time for it.