I say this every time but once or twice a year the media likes to talk about the super moon coming around. There's always some reason for its importance that means the BBC weather girl will tell you to go out and see it on a particular night due to its increased size. Sadly, super is more mediocre of a size difference than the media are willing to admit. This photo was taken with a 400mm lens and had to be severely cropped and sharpened to make out the moon clearly. If you use a mobile phone to get a moon snap, expect more of a fuzzy dot than this! However, seeing the moon early morning is an amazing sight when it changes colour and worth the effort to see even if you can't get a good photo of it. My personal tip is to use a mobile app called TPE "the photographer's ephemeris" to predict exactly when and where the moon will be at any time or date. http://photoephemeris.com (available on Google or iOS)

Moon photo uncropped -even with a big lens, it still looks small!

Last night was a super moon eclipse. I managed to see some of a partial eclipse but missed out on the full thing due to a niggly baby. I personally dislike the term super moon as it makes it sound massive.

At best it is only 14% bigger which considering the size of the moon to the naked human eye doesn't mean an awful lot at all. Even the BBC was waxing on about how the moon is 2 or 3 times brighter. To a photographer, that just means one stop of light which isn't much in photo terms. The moon is always so much brighter than its surroundings that to get a photo of the moon at night with both the environment and moon well exposed you would need a camera with a massive dynamic range or some creative photoshopping (I suspect most moon photos tend towards the later).

This is a heavily cropped pic of the moon from last night taken with my 400mm lens while the moon was quite high at about 1am. To get great photos of the moon, you would need a 800mm lens or bigger. I got up at 6 this morning to get the moon on the horizon but the biggest issue with the photos I took was that the moon was not a nice circle. Being close to the horizon and probably with the earning morning air, the moon gets squashed into an ugly wobbly egg. So the next time you see a beautiful photo of the moon well exposed, near the horizon surrounded by picturesque scenery, be more than a little suspicious if the photographer claims it is not photoshopped.

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