Digital Photography Hacks

Shoot the Moon

The moon is a fascinating photo subject, and with a little equipment and some experimentation, you can capture fantastic results.

The moon enhances the mood of evening landscape compositions [Hack #37] , but it’s also a great subject unto itself. With a little additional equipment and some hacking technique, your digital camera can get up close and personal with our favorite celestial body.

This hack discusses two advanced techniques for taking pictures of the moon. The first focuses on adding telephoto-lens attachments to the front of your digital camera lens, or attaching a telephoto lens to your digital SLR. The second technique involves attaching your digital camera to the eyepiece of a telescope to really zoom in on lunar surface detail. But first, let’s look at some standard lens attachments you can use for this project.

Getting Your Glass Together

Job one is to use a lens with a focal length that is large enough to provide sufficient magnification. By doing so, the moon will be rendered as an acceptable size in your viewfinder.

When we discuss digital-camera lenses, we often use the so-called equivalent focal-length terminology, denoting the focal length (in millimeters) of a 35mm film-camera lens that has the same angle of view. For example, an Olympus C-3050 digicam might list its zoom lens as 7-21mm, but in film-camera terms, it’s a 35-105mm equivalent. This means that the lens gives the same range of angles as a 35-105mm lens on a 35mm film camera.

To figure ...