There are certain times of the month (or lunar cycle to be precise) when I make a special effort to get out to watch and photograph the moon.
Two days into a new moon is a favourite, as the moon is a slim crescent close to the western horizon at dusk, while there's still colour in the sky from the just set sun to show it off against.
Another favourite is full moon, with a day's leeway either side.
I shot this timelapse video of the moon setting behing a fir tree plantation on the slopes of my local hill, Moel Famau, just a day after full moon on a crisp morning in early May.
At this time of year that means a 4am start for me to be in position at the right time, all set up and ready to photograph.
If you look carefully you can see the trees just starting to pick up some light from the newly risen sun, far away to the east.
Of course, none of this works if it's cloudy, and I was fortunate this morning as, although there were clouds about, they kept out of the picture until the moon had just about finished setting.
I shot the stills for this sequence using a 400mm zoom, and looking through the viewfinder on my Canon 5D I could actually see the moon moving through the frame. Therefore I used a relatively fast shooting rate of 2 seconds between frames in order to get a reasonably smooth moon motion.
Focusing, shutter speed, white balance and aperture were all set manually to avoid the camera changing things as the light levels fluctuated, and I had to severely under expose the scene to avoid burning out the moon.
Filename - moonset timelapse 01.mp4
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 100-400mm zoom
Location - Moel Famau, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.