Spring Photo a Day - #23

I've been keeping an eye on the waxing moon lately.  It caught my eye a few days ago as a tiny sliver rising over the lake, as it looked really cool with some light clouds and some pine trees framing it, but it was virtually impossible to photograph that way, at least with the equipment I have.  OK, not impossible, but it wouldn't have been a good photo.

Last night was a very clear night though, and now that it is waxing and is about halfway to full it is starting to get easier to shoot.

I bolted the 400mm to the 5D II and my tripod and used live view to get the focus just right on this one.  (Sometimes digital really is very convenient compared to film.)

The cool thing about shooting the moon is that you already know the exposure.  Some of you may have heard of the Sunny 16 rule (on a bright sunny day you can set at f/16 and 1/ISO for your shutter speed - try it sometime).  Well the rule for the moon is 1-2 stops less than sunny 16.  Full moon, f/11.  Half moon, f/8.  Sunny 8?  Moonie 11?  I dunno...but it works.  I opened up 2 stops for a faster shutter speed just to make sure there wasn't motion blur from the moon, adjusted accordingly, and made this frame.

Even with the 400mm on, I cropped this pretty significantly to get the moon as big as it is in the frame (this is probably 1/4 of the frame or so).

(click photo to view larger)

EXIF:  Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 400mm f/5.6L, f/5.6, 1/400, ISO200
Exposure Date:  April 12, 2011