How do people shoot very large moon views?

Question

I see pictures of the moon that looks like it is very close to the earth; I am wondering whether they are real or is there a trick to show the moon that big?

Here is an example: http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2011/20mar11/Paco-Bellido1.jpg

MikeW · Accepted Answer

Those are done using the compression of a telephoto lens.  Longer lenses will magnify the subject, so will make the moon look bigger. It will also make buildings and other objects bigger, but by moving yourself further away from those earthbound objects you can reduce them back to a smaller size.  But you can't really get further away from the moon, so it will remain the same size no matter where you move locally.

So in your example, that might look like it was taken from a short distance away with a 50mm lens, but in fact it may have been taken much further away with a 500mm lens.  Result is the foreground looks about the same as if you'd taken it closer with a 50mm lens, but the moon on the other hand is magnified quite a bit.

Tony · Answer

It is worth mentioning the 'moon illusion' as well. The moon will look big to the human eye when close to the horizon but it is an illusion - try a photograph and see it 'shrink' to it's proper size.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion

And as a direct answer to your questions, long lens and careful placement of foreground interest.

Thomas Mueller · Answer

It seems to be real.

If you are shooting the moon with a 800mm lens, the image of the moon will be 
approximatly 8mm in diameter.

If Paco used an APSC sensor, the dimensions of the image frame make sense.

Thomas Mueller

old squinter · Answer

An easy to demonstrate "bar bet trick" is to ask someone what object held at full arm's length most closely just covers a full moon/the sun - a coaster, a bottle cap, an aspirin? It's the aspirin! We mentally enlarge the object in our primary focus with the naked eye, and even though our broad field of vision is considered equivalent to 35-50mm lens equivalent in a 35mm SLR, it's mostly just blur except for the small central focus we concentrate on. Knowing this, it's easy to see why long telephoto equivalents are essential in shooting to fill a better part of a scene with the sun or moon.

Answered by old squinter on May 6, 2021

How do people shoot very large moon views?

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