Waning Gibbous Moon

 

The moon, in its first day of its waning gibbous phase. As always, click the photo to enlarge.

August 9th (2025) marked the most recent full moon. It was spectacular, and clear skies showed it nicely. I remarked to Shauna that we should attempt to create images of it the following night. In preparation, I did a bit of searching for moon photography articles and learned something new. Apparently it is better to shoot the moon either the day prior to the full moon (waxing gibbous phase) or the day after, when these shots were made. Increased shadowing around the moon's edge better highlights craters and other features of the lunar landscape. You'll see that, especially if you click on an image to enlarge it. When the moon is completely full, it will look largely white and featureless - something I have noticed from past full moon shoots.

A tighter shot of the moon in all its glory. Around here, we're just as likely to have cloudy skies during interesting celestial phenomena, if not more likely. But two totally clear skies in a row made for great moon watching, and photography.

To make these shots, I used my Canon R5 (I still have my trusty 5D IV but haven't touched it since I went mirrorless), and the Canon 800mm f/5.6 lens. That rig weighs a LOT, so needless to say it was mounted to my Gitzo tripod/Wemberley head. My settings were f/16, ISO 4000, at 1/125 second exposure. You don't want to go much if any slower than that shutter speed, as the moon is moving and with too slow a shutter speed it won't be tack sharp.

To prevent any motion blur on my end, I used the camera's 2-second delay feature so that there would not be even the slightest motion caused by me pressing the shutter. I could have used the 10-second delay, but that would have been overkill. Likewise, I could have plugged in a remote shutter release cord, but the timer is easier and the end result is the same. I found that underexposing one-third of a stop retained more of the moon's orangish cast, and I did very little to these images in post-processing other than crop.

Finally, to better zoom in on an object that is nearly 239,000 miles away, I resorted to my rarely used Canon 2x extender. That makes the lens 1600mm millimeters. When shooting relatively stable objects like this, where one can use all the tactics to prevent motion blur as described above, the 2x works well. While I use the 1.4x extender all of the time, the 2x isn't nearly as user-friendly for active wildlife of the sort that I often shoot. But for celestial objects, it works great.