As I started to file away the blue moon shot from last week, I was thinking that the shot was pretty impressive--for a handheld shot. I have taken full moon shots before (see below from 2018 and 2020) but none turned out as nice as with this combination of lens and camera. I now have the Nikon Z9 and I was using the Nikon 70-200 at 200mm, cropped tight in post. I do have a longer lens (100-400mm) and now I wish I would have tried it (maybe next month) to see if I can get it even sharper as I wouldn't have to crop so much. However, the longer the lens, the harder it is to handhold and keep sharp. Surprisingly, the moon is a very bright subject and you can shoot at a fast speed to limit hand shake. The shot above was at a 1/180 of a second at ISO 100 and that was fast enough to keep it both bright and sharp.
The moon below was my previous best. It was taken with my previous camera, the Z7 and a handheld 150-600mm at 600mm. Despite the longer lens and faster shutter speed of 1/1250 at ISO 6400, it didn't do as well. I should have reduced the f-stop (depth of field) as the moon is a flat object with no depth in the night sky. You can't crop in as tight, as the quality of the shot breaks down, with that combination so it is a smaller shot, despite the longer lens.
So, three moon views from three different cameras. Pretty amazing how fast the technology has changed and I didn't really push the Z9 to see if I can get a better shot with a longer lens. Again, I might lose out on holding it steady--we shall see. There are a lot of tricks to try and I will try a couple and see how it goes!!!
