Pre-Dawn Lunar Crescent with the S3...

[chicagoastronomer]

Early Morning Lunar Crescent Images with the S3

While out on early pre-dawn adventures, I spotted the crescent Moon hanging beautifully in the eastern sky out the passenger side window. As I always have the Canon S3 in the car, I took some time to image a few shots.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/josephguzman/Lunar/Montage1.jpg

More pics of the session can be found here:

http://astronomer.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Astrophotraphy&thread=1181631017

Going for another session this early morning with an even thinner crescent!

[amccomis]

Can you share your settings/methods here?

I have an S3, and I zoomed all the way in (12x) on a full moon last winter (pre-dawn like in your shots) and couldn't get nearly anything like this.

[chicagoastronomer]

The different lunar poses have different exposures.

The tan darker ones, had exposures around 1/30 to 1/100 or so and aperture closed down to retain the crispness.

The brighter ones varied from 8 to 15 seconds and many inbetween, with the aperture wide open. Some had a polarizer attached, but most did not.

I learned in order to have a larger lunar image, is to shoot the shots in large format. Then crop the image...ergo it becomes much larger at 100%.

I don't have the EXIF handy, but this is a loose guideline.