Tonight was the ‘super’ moon, a full moon that occurs 25 minutes before perigee. It would be within 600km of the smallest possible lunar perigee (356,955km vs ~356,400km).
I had some free time in the evening, so I decided to try to photograph the event. I choose to use Parliament Hill as the foreground, so I drove to the Museum of Civilization. There were over a dozen other photographers there, all with tripods like myself. I wasn’t quite sure what lens I should use, but after experimenting, I found that the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 allowed the best magnification of the moon and to bring the moon and the foreground together. If I went with a wider lens (like the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8), the details would be too small, and the moon would seem insignificant. If I had used the Canon EF 1.4x EXII extender, it would crop the buildings in the foreground.
In the end, I was not able to solve the biggest problem – the massive contrast difference between the full (‘super’) moon and the local buildings after sunset. I could not maintain any surface detail on the moon, even if I tried tone-mapping/HDR.
