Testing my new lens by shooting the Moon!

Tonight I had my first opportunity to take some pictures of the moon with my new 500mm f8-f22 prime lens... There was still some light cloud cover, but it was the first time I'd seen the moon in weeks, so set up in the garden to grab some shots.


I have a simple, relatively cheap set up so the results are not amazing. However, considering I shot them through a light haze of cloud I'm quite surprised by the sharpness of the results. I was going to shoot some shots without my 2.0x teleconverter, and then shoot some with the converter to compare. I decided against this and just went for it. 


With the APS-C sized sensor in my D5000 I had a 35mm equivalent focal length of 1500mm! I had previously been working with a Tamron 70-300mm lens with the converter, meaning an extra 600mm to play with.


The first, and most difficult part of this was actually getting the moon in frame. Not having the ability to zoom out, find your subject and then zoom in can be quite irritating after a while... maybe I'm missing a trick? Once I got the moon in frame, and focused, I was immediately surprised by the quality of what I could see! The lens I purchased cost me £30 off eBay, and I really didn't expect much from it if I'm honest, however for the price I'm over the moon (sorry!).

Anyway, I took about 15 shots, and selected my favourite three with the intention of ruling it down to one, but I like both of the following photos...

Pretty much the same settings as to the right, however, 

I set the camera to -1.3 Exposure compensation to 

eliminate the over exposure. Shot at f8 ISO800 1/20 sec.

I feel this shot is a little over exposed, shot 
at f8 ISO800 shutter speed of 1/20 sec.

I think out of the two, the 'over exposed' shot is definitely my favourite in a smaller format. The darker image seems to have better detail when viewed at 100%. Both images were taken when there was a hazy cloud cover, as stated above, so I'm quite looking forward to seeing what the pictures will be like on a completely clear night! 


They aren't as good as a previous shot I had taken with my old set up, but that was on a completely clear night so that's probably why! I'll be trying to develop my technique on this over time, hopefully the next set of pictures will be even better.