How To Shoot The Blue Supermoon – August 2023

The “Renewal” series above may be seen in higher resolution here. Renewal is a collection of moon timelapses during the pandemic. Each piece is animated to be a breathing guide to reduce anxiety and improve mindfulness 😌. I hope you like them.

3. Why Is The Moon So Colourful?

You may have noticed in the shots above that the moon’s colour changes drastically between shots. However, when you look up at the sky at night, the moon appears white. Why?

This change in colour is due to the Earth’s atmosphere. When the moon is near the horizon (at and near moonrise), the moon’s light travels a longer distance through the atmosphere. This longer path results in blue wavelengths of light scattering, leaving the redder wavelengths.

This light scattering diminishes as the moon rises higher in the sky, making the moon appear whiter and brighter.

Additionally, dust in the atmosphere can increase the colour change when the moon is closer to the horizon and also when the moon is high in the sky. This atmospheric dust is why the moon appears oranger during forest fires. The smoke scatters the blue light, leaving behind the longer red light wavelengths.

Understanding where the colour of the moon comes from is the first step to planning your shoot.

4. Planning The Shoot

Finding the Colour

To shoot the moon and get the bright and interesting colours from the images shown above (not the eclipse video), you must shoot the moon at the horizon. In other words, you must shoot the moon when it rises or sets.

If you are shooting moonrise, you will need to find a place where you can see the horizon to the East. If you are shooting moonset, you will need to find a place where you can see the horizon to the West.

Augmented Reality Planning

To assist with locating where the moon will rise or set, you can use an astro planning app, such as PhotoPills. As shown in the image below, PhotoPills has an Augmented Reality (AR) function that allows you to visualize where the moon will rise and set.

This app also shows you the exact time that the moon will crest the horizon in your region. YOu can use this time to determine when you should arrive for your shoot.

Calibration

IMPORTANT you must first calibrate your PhotoPills app using the sun or the moon. Calibrating the app accounts for potential magnetic, atmospheric, and city building distortion that may impact the app’s positioning.

I HIGHLY recommend going to your desired shooting location at least one day before the shoot in order to calibrate your AR app so you know exactly where the moon is going to rise.

Note that this calibration is much more important if you are going to shoot with a telephoto lens. A wide angle moonrise shot will be able to capture the general direction of the moonrise, though knowing the exact positioning will help you determine your composition ahead of time.

You can see in the top right corner of the image above that there is an offset. This offset is the calibration adjustment I made by using the sun.

Composition

Next, decide on your composition.

There is no right answer to this question, the “right” composition will vary from person to person.

Some factors to keep in mind:

• • If you are using a telephoto lens, how zoomed in are you?

• • Is there anything in the foreground you would like to include or exclude?

• • If you are using a wide angle lens, what is your foreground?

• • How many moon widths do you want for the sky?

• • Are people able to walk in front of you?

• • Will you be disturbed in this location?

Remember that you should always prioritize safety when shooting. Be careful of any danger from wildlife or vehicles when you choose your shooting location.

Output Type

Now that you know your composition, let’s return to the original question: why are you shooting the moon?

If you would like to take a timelapse, you will have to plan your shoot in more depth than if you are planning on taking single images (more detail on timelapses below).

Similarly, a video will have different requirements than a timelapse or a single photo.

You can take a video of the moonrise and speed up the video for a timelapse in post-production (after the shoot). However, most cameras limit the settings for video and you might not be able to get enough exposure with a video. More on this below in Camera Settings.

My Recommendation for Moonrise: Timelapse

I recommend attempting a timelapse. Timelapses are when you use an intervelometer (more on this in a moment) to automatically take multiple photos in a row. When played back quickly, the multiple photos form frames in a video, allowing you to watch the moonrise in fast-motion.

An advantage of shooting a timelapse is that you are left with photos that can be processed into a video. Two for one.

You can also take the frames from the edited timelapse video and composite (stack) them together to create this type of image:

Note: if you are doing a composite image like the one above, you can ALSO take a photo of the landscape during blue hour to preserve the detail of the foreground. You can instead take a long exposure of the foreground once the moon has moved out of frame to preserve the detail of the foreground at night to be used in your composite photo. More on this in another post.

That said, if you are trying to take a hyper detailed image of the moon and are planning on stacking the images for noise reduction and detail improvement, I have found that a mix of burst photos and video is best. Taking a video creates thousands of frames that can be used in “lucky imaging” to composite the best parts of different frames to piece together a high resolution image of the moon.

Lucky Imaging is a complicated topic and is outside the scope of this article, but let me know if you have any questions and I am happy to help.

5. Equipment

The equipment needed for shooting the moon will vary depending on your output (photo, video, or timelapse) and on your composition (wide-angle or telephoto lens).

Essential Equipment:

1. Fully-charged battery (and a backup)
2. Empty memory card (for potentially 1000 + photos)
3. Tripod and weight
4. Camera
5. Lens
6. Intervalometer (if taking a timelapse)
7. Air Pump (for cleaning)

More details on my equipment can be found here.

Batteries

It is always best to have a full charge when going out to shoot the full moon. If you are taking a timelapse for half an hour and are planning on taking 1000 or more photos, your camera battery may die partway through the shoot. It is always worth having a backup just in case.

Memory Card

If you are taking a timelapse or long video file, you want to make sure you have sufficient room on your memory card. My preference is always to have an empty 512 Gb memory card. Some of my timelapses have been 3000 or more photos and I have greatly appreciated having the space on my card to capture the timelapse I desire.

Note, for the average person, you will likely not be taking 1000 photos. I like having “slow” timelapses of moonrise so I tend to set the interval on my camera to around 1 photo per second. More on this under intervalometer below.

Tripod and Weight

A sturdy tripod is essential for taking sharp telephotos of the moon. The moon is moving at a relatively quick pace compared to the Earth, so there is already motion blur that will be introduced into your shots. You do not want to introduce camera shake with a tripod that can’t handle the weight of your camera and lens.

I personally love my K&F Concept Tripod. I got it a few months ago and my shots have never been more stable with a telephoto lens.

A weight hanging from the bottom of your tripod can help stabilize the tripod from you pressing buttons and the wind.

Camera

The camera you use should be the best camera you have available, preferably, a camera with good low light performance. I used my Sony A7iii, in part because it is ISO invariant so I can shoot at lower ISO and faster shutter speeds with little to no impact on noise performance. If you would like to learn more about ISO invariance, Alyn Wallace has a great post).

Lens

Consider if you would like to use a telephoto lens or a wide-angle lens. The lens I use for telephoto moon shots is the Sony 100-400 with a 1.4 teleconverter, making an effective focal length of 560 mm.

Your lens choice will dictate the composition of your shots. If you have multiple cameras, you can shoot from two angles, like I did for the lunar eclipses in these videos:

Intervalometer

An intervalometer is a device that allows you to automatically release the shutter of your camera. You can, for example, set the interval at 7 seconds and the intervalometer will automatically take a photo every 7 seconds.

Some cameras have built-in intervalometers (like my Sony A7iii). If you don’t have an intervalometer in your camera, you can use an external intervalometer that plugs into your camera or an app such as Shutter that connects wirelessly to your camera. Important: check to make sure the intervalometer is compatible with your camera.

Air Pump

I always have a hand air pump for my camera when going out to shoot. I never know if there will be dust or dirt on my camera lens or sensor, so it is best to be prepared.

6. Camera Settings

Wide Angle vs Telephoto Composition

Please note that the settings below will vary between a wide angle and a telephoto composition.

For wide angle compositions, the moon moves relatively little between each shot, so the shutter speed is less important. Additionally, with a wide angle shot, you are not as concerned with trying to capture the detail of the craters on the moon, so the aperture is less important.

For wide angle compositions, you can use whichever shutter speed and aperture balance the overall exposure of your shot, taking into account that too long of a shutter speed may overexpose the moon.

During moonrise, overexposure is less of an issue, because the contrast with the moon and the sky is diminished by the remaining sunlight. However, as the moon moves higher in the sky and the night darkens, the contrast increases, making it more difficult to exposure the foreground AND the moon properly. At this point, you will need to decide if you want to overexpose the moon or underexpose the foreground. A potential solution is exposure bracketing, which I explain more in my lunar eclipse guide here.

In contrast, for telephoto compositions, the shutter speed and aperture are essential for getting a proper shot. The settings described below are for telephoto shooting.

Starting Aperture

When using a telephoto lens to shoot the moon, you want to keep your aperture above f8 if possible. f9 to f11 is more ideal.

When in doubt, try to use the Looney 11 Rule for shooting the moon. This rule suggests the following settings as a baseline:

• • Aperture at f11

• • Shutter speed = 1/ISO

The reason for this rule is that the moon has such a vast change in depth with its mountains and valleys (craters) that we can actually notice a difference in sharpness if the depth of field is too small (i.e., the aperture is very open, such as f2). If you are shooting very wide angle, you may not notice a detail drop by using lower aperture, since the moon will be relatively small in the frame anyways.

Note that this rule begins to break down at longer focal lengths due to motion blur. At longer focal lengths (above 300 mm) you likely want to use a faster shutter speed.

Starting Shutter Speed

The best way to determine your maximum shutter speed is to test it out a few days before at your desired focal length to see when the moon begins to blur.

For example, when shooting the moon with telephoto lenses, another general rule of thumb is to shoot at a shutter speed = 1/125s or faster. Shooting at this speed will keep the moon sharp despite its relatively rapid movement through the night sky.

At a focal length of 560 mm, I generally try to keep my shutter speed faster than 1/250. However, as the moon is cresting the horizon, it is somewhat dark, and may require a slower shutter speed OR a higher ISO.

Also keep in mind that motion blur is not salvageable. If the shot is blurry, it cannot be saved. However, if there is noise in the shot from high ISO, noise can be reduced in post-processing.

Starting ISO

Each camera has a native ISO level that produces the lowest amount of noise for that sensor. For my Sony a7iii, the native ISO is 100. When selecting your ISO settings, remember that lower ISO = lower noise introduced into the shot and conversely, higher ISO = more noise.

The increase in noise from shooting at higher ISO is why shutter speed and aperture are used to maximize brightness for most shooting situations, since they do not introduce noise.

However, as noted above, using longer shutter speeds (slower than 1/125 s) introduces motion blur to moon shots. Accordingly, shooting the moon becomes a balance of ISO and shutter speed to maximize the sharpness of the image; we want to have a slower shot to reduce noise, but not so slow that we introduce more motion blur than would have been introduced by noise due to increasing the ISO.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the specific conditions that you are experiencing the night of the full moon, so be prepared to be flexible during your shoot.

Understanding how to use your camera and adjust your settings will impact the quality of your shot and help you maximize your chances of a successful lunar shoot.

Focus

Shoot with Manual focus. No other considerations needed. You want the focus to remain on the moon for the entire shoot and do not want automatic focus accidentally changing your focus part way through.

If you would like, you can use automatic focus to focus on a point as far off in the distance as possible (note, not infinity). Once the camera is focused on that location, you can switch to manual focus to lock the focus.

That said, I always shoot in manual focus from the start. With a telephoto lens, the focus is so sensitive, I want the focus on the moon to be perfect.

If you have never shot the moon before, I highly recommend practicing getting the focus right a few days before shooting the moon. Getting the focus perfect for lunar photography can be quite challenging, especially when dealing with a moonrise. My technique is to find a very obvious crater on the moon and shift the focus until I can see that region very clearly.

I recommend zooming in as far as possible and using either the view finder or live view to check how sharp the moon is. Autofocus is a good start, but I have found that my camera autofocus does not quite get the tack sharp craters that I can get if I use manual focus. So, I start with auto focus to get a general focus range and then I tweak it using manual focus. Autofocus will also not work prior to moonrise (since there is no moon to focus on).

Accordingly, I focus on the moon the night before, note what the focal distance is, and take a few test shots. For each shot, I review the photo and zoom in to check that everything was as sharp as it could be. Once the focus is as good as possible, I left the camera in manual focus mode so that subsequent shots didn’t alter the focus.

Make sure that your focus does not change during the shoot. My 100-400 lens has a smooth/tighten ring, so I can manually set the lens to be more difficult to accidentally change the focus. If your lens does not have that, and you are worried about the focus ring shifting during your shoot, you can get a piece of tape and tape the focus ring down.

Changing the Settings During Shoot

The settings you select for your lunar shoot may vary throughout the shoot.

For example, when the moon first crests the horizon, the sky is still somewhat bright relative to the moon, so it is easier to avoid overexposing the foreground or the moon. As the moon rises, it gets brighter and the foreground gets darker, increasing the dynamic range and making it more difficult to expose both of them properly.

Accordingly, adjust the settings as needed to avoid losing detail. Remember, shadows can be salvaged but blown out highlights cannot. Err on the side of underexposing the foreground and properly exposing the moon.

Note that adjusting your settings may require you to stop your timelapse. When shooting with an interval of 1 s between shots (more detail on this interval below), stopping the timelapse AT ALL will introduce stutter to the video, so change the settings sparingly, or wait until the moon has risen close to the top of the frame when you are about to adjust your composition anyways.

Exposure Bracketing

As an advanced technique, you can use exposure bracketing to take an underexposed, properly exposed, and overexposed shot (three or more shots forming a bracket) to better expose the moon and the foreground.

If you would like to learn more about exposure bracketing, please see my shooting the lunar eclipse guide here.

Camera Menu Settings To Consider

Image Stabilization

Turn off image stabilization when using a tripod. The motor used for stabilization can actually introduce shake into the shot when sitting on a tripod, so it’s best to turn this setting off.

Long Exposure Noise Reduction

Turn off long exposure noise reduction (LENR). Some cameras have this feature automatically turned on. This feature takes a second shot after the first shot with shutter closed, producing a dark frame. The camera then uses the dark frame to remove noise from the shot. However, this can take a long time, more than doubling the length of each shot, making this setting impractical for timelapse photography.

RAW or JPEG?

Always shoot in RAW. You can export as JPEGs if you want to afterwards, but if you shoot in JPEG, you cannot salvage the data that was lost by not shooting in RAW. Additionally, you will likely be cropping the photo to centre the moon, so shooting in RAW can help retain detail. Also, RAW images have much more dynamic range, an essential component of shooting the lunar eclipse. Shoot in RAW, I can’t overemphasize this. Note that shooting in RAW will increase the file size of each photo, so you should double check that your memory card can handle the number of RAW photos you would like to take, especially if you are planning on shooting a timelapse.

Histogram

Turn on the histogram view (the exposure graph). Expose for the highlights until the moon gets too bright, then expose for the shadows. Shadows can often be recovered when shooting in RAW, but if the highlights are blown out, there is no data to salvage. More detail may be found in this histogram post here.

White Balance

Most of the time, I shoot in auto white balance. However, when shooting a timelapse, I shoot in manual white balance for the entire timelapse. Setting a constant white balance can reduce flicker in the end video and can always be fixed in post-production (when shooting in RAW).

7. Timelapse Settings

Equations (Shooting Interval, Duration, Number of Shots, Video Length)

Timelapses are governed by two equations:

1. 1. total shooting time = number of shots X interval between shots
   2. video output duration = number of photos/frame rate of video

These two equations are related to one another when the total shooting time is limited. In other words, if you can only shoot for 15 minutes and you want a 30 second video played at a frame rate of 30fps (frames per second), you will need 900 photos within the 15 minutes, which is a photo interval of 1 photo per second.

Working backwards, 1 photo per second is 60 photos a minute. 60 photos per minute for 15 minutes is 15*60 = 900.

Let’s expand on these equations and the numbers I used.

When the moon is rising at the horizon, it rises fast. There is a period of about 15 minutes where the moon is at the horizon to where it can be seen by my telephoto lens (560 mm). If your telephoto lens is shorter, you will have longer before the moon moves out of frame.

Accordingly, you need to consider what you will do when the moon begins to move out of frame. There are two options: zoom out (ending the original composition) or leave the composition as it is, and continue taking a timelapse of the scenery.

If I want to capture a 30 second video in that 15 minutes, I need enough photos to play back at 30 frames per second to create the video. 30 frames per second for 30 seconds is 30*30 =900 photos.

That means I need to take 900 photos in 15 minutes. 15 minutes is 900 seconds (15 minutes * 60 seconds per minute). 900 photos over 900 seconds is a shooting interval of 1 photo per second.

If instead I wanted to capture a 10 second video, I would do the following:

15 minutes = 900 seconds (15*60)

10 seconds = 300 photos (30 fps * 10 s)

900 seconds / 300 photos = 1 photo every 3 seconds

Accordingly, for a shorter output video duration, I can take less photos.

Other Timelapse Tips

Shoot in manual white balance to avoid flicker.

As tempting as it is, try not to fiddle with your camera during the timelapse, the end video will be unusable.

It’s better to have the moon settings incorrect for the timelapse video than adjust the settings too frequently (introducing flicker and shake to the video). That said, if you are looking to use the timelapse to form a composite image, you want the settings to be perfect at the cost of a shaky video. There will always be a tradeoff at such short intervels (less than 5s) between the sharpness of the shot and the stability of the timelapse. At longer intervals, it’s possible to change the settings without disrupting the flow of the timelapse.

It’s better to take more photos than less, you can always delete them later.

Consider taking a foreground shot while the daylight is still present OR take a long exposure once the moon has moved out of frame. This properly exposed foreground can be used in a composite image to improve the detail in the foreground.

8. Video Settings

Video settings can be a bit tricky when shooting subjects with a high dynamic range (very bright and very dark at the same time). Accordingly, I usually shoot moonrise as a timelapse.

That said, if shooting a video, the number one consideration is going to be: are you properly exposing the video WITHOUT introducing motion blur to the moon. If the video is shooting at a shutter speed of 1/60 s (due to the 180 degree rule) and you are shooting a telephoto shot, you will potentially be introducing motion blur at larger focal lengths.

Accordingly, you will need to shoot the video in manual mode where you can control the shutter speed to the proper speed to avoid introducing motion blur of the moon.

I recommend testing video recording of the moon at faster shutter speeds prior to your full moonrise shoot to see how sharp the video is.

9. Putting It All Together

To help you prepare and visualize for shooting the Blue Supermoon (and any other full moon), here is a walkthrough of my technique:

The Day Before

Go to the shooting location and plan my composition. Identify the time I need to arrive at the shooting location the following day. If possible, check focus against the current moon and note the focal distance.

Define my goals for the shoot. If timelapse, determine duration, number of photos, and interval.

Clear my memory card, charge my battery, pack up my equipment.

Check the weather. If the following day is set to be bad, attempt to shoot the moon tonight (the moon will appear almost 100% full the night before the full moon occurs).

The Day Of

Confirm I have all of my equipment.

Arrive at shooting location 30 minutes before moonrise to set up equipment and get camera ready. Point telephoto lens at the shooting location and ensure focus.

Approximately 3 minutes before moonrise, begin the timelapse at 3 second intervals.

Monitor the horizon for signs that the full moon has begun rising. When moon is spotted, change timelapse interval to 1 second interval.

Monitor camera settings for exposure balance, changing ISO as needed to maintain proper exposure levels. (NOTE: minimize touching the camera during the timelapse).

When the moon is about to go out of frame, zoom out to my next composition.

Repeat until the moon is too high above the horizon to fit in frame.

Take 2 minute video of the moon for high resolution lucky imaging processing.

The Day After

Import, backup, and process timelapse photos ✨ Use LRTimelapse to speed up the editing process drastically. 

10. Final Tip: Patience

Shooting the moon with a telephoto lens is a difficult task, made even more difficult by taking a timelapse. Each time I shot the full moon, I improved for the next one. While there is hype around the “Blue Supermoon”, the full moon is always a beautiful sight to behold.

If the weather is cloudy and you cannot get the shot you wanted, do not give up hope. There will be other moons.

Even if the weather is poor, it is always worth going to your shooting location. Sometimes the moon will appear through the clouds for a few minutes, making an eerily beautiful composition.