Capturing the Supermoon – perigree, syzygy and apogee

I woke up early the other day. 4:30am. Coincidently it was the morning of the April 2021 supermoon or pink moon. I took the following pictures with my Nikon D7200 with 18-300 millimetre lens. 

Read this great article from a specialist on moon shots. for the variety of settings to get the moon shot that doesn’t look like a bright disk. I add in what my variation on the settings was for me to get the phot on the right.

My first couple of pictures had the moon as a bright disc. Not interesting at all. My final settings were based on setting everything to manual, iso 100, 1/125 of a second F11 and although the lens zoom suggests only 125mm – I had the lens zoomed into its max of 300mm.

I used the timer to ensure that after pressing the shutter button, the camera – firmly fixed on the tripod, did not shake.

Here are a couple of comparison shots of good and bad. This ABC article details some of the science around the event.

Here is the best photo, but to check out the set including couple of the bright disc style photos, here is a link to the album.

As I rode my bicycle to the office at 5:45am, the brightness was welcomed as lit my path into the city.