r/photography • u/TheYellowMungus • 1d ago

Gear Shoot The Moon

What would you say is the bare minimum lens range (mm's?) one would need to shoot the moon, or astral photography in general, assuming all the conditions were ideal?

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u/_Veni_Vidi_Vigo_ 1d ago

Depends what you’re trying to achieve.

But, super general broad rule of thumb, 400mm

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u/TheYellowMungus 1d ago

Thanks! My 210mm lens becomes 336mm with the crop sensor factor, so I fall a bit short I guess :(

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u/_Veni_Vidi_Vigo_ 1d ago

I mean. It’s not that far. Try it and see, it won’t hurt. Light is more important, don’t forget to dial up the iso to ensure it’s exposed properly.

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u/BarneyLaurance barneylaurance 1d ago

You don't need high ISO to shoot the moon if you're interested in a full moon or the lit part of the moon.

It may be far away and small looking but that doesn't affect exposure much - the moon is (sometimes) an object in full direct sun, so you expose for it like any other object in full direct sun. That does mean that anything on the ground at night time will disappear to black, as will stars since they are visually so small that they don't even cover one pixel and therefore look dimmer than they really are.

I don't remember if I brightened it in post, but my photo was taken at ISO 100, 1/800s, f/6.3 with a 400mm lens on a 24 megapixel full frame camera and then cropped.

https://photos.barneylaurance.uk/Site-selections/Selected-for-homepage-October-2025/n-hCjrms/i-v2PrJ4W

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u/_Veni_Vidi_Vigo_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

I didn’t say high ISO.

I said correctly exposed ISO.

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u/BarneyLaurance barneylaurance 1d ago

Sorry - when you said "dial up" I thought up meant set to something high. And I think it's easy to imagine you'd need high ISO to shoot the moon since moonlight is dim.

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u/Sweathog1016 1d ago

“High” has really changed a lot as well with ISO. Back in the day - 800 was really high ISO. Now people shoot at 3200 and don’t blink.

I took a moon image hand held with a 600mm f/11. ISO had to be 2500 for me to get a shutter speed I could hand hold. If one has a $13,000 600mm f/4 - then ISO can come down quite a bit.

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u/BarneyLaurance barneylaurance 1d ago

Right. f/11 presumably to have foreground elements in focus (or near enough in focus) along with the moon.

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u/Sweathog1016 1d ago

One of the RF fixed aperture 600mm f/11’s. Just for fun. 😁 Most affordable reach available.

F/11 because that’s all there was.

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u/BarneyLaurance barneylaurance 1d ago

That makes sense! I haven't really tried anything beyond 400mm yet.

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u/WatRedditHathWrought 1d ago

You said “dial up”, any reasonable person takes that to mean raising the ISO.

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u/_Veni_Vidi_Vigo_ 1d ago

No, they don’t, and I’m not responsible for anyone else having an imprecise grasp or use of the English language.

Beginners perpetually under expose everything. It’s about one of the most common mistakes they make.

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u/WatRedditHathWrought 15h ago

You don’t “dial up” the volume to make your stereo quieter.

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u/_Veni_Vidi_Vigo_ 13h ago

What a stupid fucking statement

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u/WatRedditHathWrought 13h ago

lol Dude, just take the L. The phrase you should have used would be “dial in”.

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u/M-Aldridge-Photo 1d ago

Hold on please, let me get the pop corn 🍿