Moon Critique

Went out to the countryside this week to visit my in-laws and took a few pics. Only had my camera 1 week and want some honest serious criticism - I'm a big boy and can take it so please don't hold anything back.

This is my first time shooting the moon and was using my 28-105 lens - there was some ambient light that was interfering with the shot but overall I think it's pretty good. it's not a completely full moon as these were shot the night before the full moon. Good thing too since the sky was overcast the next night.

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Hi Createsean.
For your moon shots were you trying to expose mainly for some sky detail? The moon in each case is way overexposed.

A typical full moon exposure is about: ISO 100, f/8, 1/250 sec.
If you were after some sky detail, then you could expect the moon to be overexposed. For the 1st shot I think you could have got some sky with half that exposure or even less. But you would have lost some colour saturation. The moon would have been nicely detailed for the magnification.

For the 2nd shot it is apparent to me that you were only after the sky, so I won't say much about it. Because the bright moon is far off the centre of the frame, you got a bit of lens flare. A lens hood would help to reduce this.

The only other comment is: Why did you use such a small aperture (f/29) in the 1st shot? That would help introduce camera shake (though I can't see any here).
Am.

EDIT: PS. I have also commented on your flowers.

ameerat42,

thanks for your help. It actually wasn't fully dark when I took the pics which helped get some of the sky detail - I was trying to get some of the clouds in there. Thanks for the info about overexposure of the moon. Hadn't considered that, but will remember for next time.

I was also having some trouble getting the settings the way I wanted and moved from aperture priority to shutter priority accidentally in the dark and didn't notice.