An idea with needed advice

Good morning,

So driving to work this morning, I see the smallest full for the year off to the west horizon. I am thinking I want to try to shoot this in the morning (tomorrow) but not sure of where to begin as far as settings are concerned. Since its close to sunrise maybe about 40min - 1hr before the west horizon has front lit sun hitting it. Also the sky itself has a mid dark blue color but the horizon I want to capture it with is darker than the horizon. With all that being said, would it be best to have a open aperture as wide as I can get say f4 or close it up a bit to f11 etc and take a longer exposure. But with a longer exposure say no more than 30secs due to moon movement. Also since I am using a kit lens this lens does not have the infinity setting and not knowing where to begin focusing also, should I try to focus on the horizon that I want to capture or focus on the moon and recompose to the horizon.

I do apologize for the lengthy question, maybe best solution is to go out there and tinker around (HA!).

Oh if it's needed at all my setup is a Canon T5i with the 18-55mm EF-S IS STM kit lens.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.

Heya,

Narrow aperture, F8~F11.
Shutter speed to exposure time.
Minimal ISO.
Shoot in RAW.
Tripod. Shutter release (or self timer).

Focus by pointing to the tree line, live view, magnification 10x, manual focus until it's sharp. Leave it in manual focus. Do no use autofocus at all. Now simply recompose the shot for the image you want.

You will be doing a long exposure, but not 30 seconds. 30 seconds with the moon will result in a big white glob in the corner. The long exposure will be for the sky to grab the colors. You actually may want to do TWO images and do a composite. One long exposure, to get the sky and foreground. One shorter exposure, to get the moon (less bright, shorter exposure). Then blend them in some post processing software.

Very best,