John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

I have a chance to paddle the local river here in Florida and view the full moon on Jan 29. Typically shoot D810 or D750 and both have pretty good high ISO performance. I will be in a canoe and am wondering about the best lens to use. I have the holy trinity, but the early version of the 24-70, which does not have VR. Also have the 24-120, with VR, but maybe the faster 24-70 would be better. Obviously at night around and after sunset. Moving on a canoe, hand held. Could also go with a fast 50mm at F1.2 but this is manual focus. I can imagine lots of reflections off of the water, so maybe DoF is important also.
Any thoughts and advice appreciated.

Hal81 Loc: Bucks County, Pa.

Advice-- Keep that camera tightly around your neck. We hear a lot of sad tails of wet cameras.

wteffey Loc: Ocala, FL USA

Sit down, sit back and enjoy the ride. If the photos are a priority, in a canoe I recommend you take the front seat and let someone else paddle. Take along a couple of very large zip-lock bags and keep your equipment sealed when not in use. A good zip-lock bag will even provide a few seconds of total submersion protection in the event things go wrong. Expect gators.

jcboy3

Canoes are not stable, so you will need a higher shutter speed to compensate. Calm water, go 2x. Slightly choppy water, go 4x. Really choppy water, 6x. That means, if you can hold your 50mm stable at 1/50 sec, you should be shooting between 1/100 and 1/300 sec.

Those will probably be unacceptably fast at sunset (and later). So shoot wider, use VR, bump up the ISO, and take multiple images.

Shoot wider. If you shoot at 24mm, then your hand held shutter speed is 1/24 sec. With canoe motion, that's a minimum of 1/50 sec.

Use VR. The 24-120 f/4 VR lens provides up to 3.5 stops stabilization. Testing has shown that you can get reliable sharpness at 1/8 sec at 24mm; below that and you may or may not get a sharp image; pretty reliable at 1/4 sec. Below that, I wouldn't bother. With canoe motion, that's a minimum of 1/16.

Increase ISO. You will want to shoot as high as is acceptable.

Multiple images. If you take several images at whatever settings you need, then you can do two things. First, you can pick the sharpest image based upon VR variability. Second, you can stack images to reduce noise and increase effective exposure time. So you can bump up the ISO to allow faster shutter speeds (stacking will average out the noise), or you can keep slower shutter speed and smooth out the water (stacking will also increase effective exposure time).

I would vary it up because you won't see what you really get until you get back to your computer. So shoot burst mode, and shoot sets of high ISO fast shutter speed and low ISO slow shutter speed shots.

Tip. I take a shot of my hand between bursts with common settings. Easy to sort them out.

Finally, the moon is very bright, so you will want to set exposure based on daylight settings to get the moon. Then merge the moon shots back in with the other shots in post.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

Thanks jcboy3. And sorry for the upper case topic. I've been reprimanded appropriately.

TJ28012 Loc: Belmont, NC

My tripod does not work in my canoe. 😂

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Take a good Point-N-Shoot.

treadwl Loc: South Florida

Try standing the tripod in the water. (assuming the water is not too deep)

Dennis833 Loc: Australia

Wait until you get to some dry land.