Lens choice for lunar photography

The Beaver Moon lunar eclipse was spectacular in Sedona. As I was preparing for lunar photography, I had a hard time deciding on the lens choice that would give me my best images. Asking online got some thoughts, but ultimately, testing my gear just before heading out provided the best answer.

Gear

I was working with the Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark III. My choices were a 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 and 40-150mm f/2.8 M. Zuiko lenses with 1.4 and 2.0 extenders. An Fotopro Eagle E6L tripod steadied my gear.

Combinations

I wasn’t sure which combination would work the best. So, I did an informal, less than scientific test on these combinations. Smaller images were sized the same to rate final quality. 100-400mm with 1.4 extender. 1120mm Full Frame (FF) 35mm field of view. I choose this one for my eclipse captures. 100-400mm and 2.0 extender. 1600mm (FF) 35mm equivalent field of view. 40-150mm with 2.0 extender. 600mm (FF) 35mm equivalent field of view.

Results

With the full moon at hand I made test images with three combinations. Would the better glass with a 2.0 extender and a smaller image that would need to be enlarged or would the largest image size work best? The clear winner for me was the 100-400mm with 1.4 extender. It gave a decent large moon on the sensor. I thought if that works the 2.0 extender would be even better. Not so for me. It tended to magnify problems during capture and showed slight blurring. I thought the 40-150mm as it was an f/2.8 lens and might do better but it lost plenty of quality when increasing size in post production.

I’ll show some of my final results from the eclipse in my next articles.

Yours in Creative Photography, Bob