We had a great moon at work tonight.

I've already seen just how well this new Canon Rebel SL3 does in low light compared to the old SX40HS. The difference is "night and day."

The moon was quite prominent in the sky tonight, which gave me the perfect opportunity to see how well the camera performs at the end of its zoom range.

I tried to zoom in using the smaller 18 - 55 mm lens, which didn't work out too well. I later discovered that this is because I had the camera set to aperture priority.

Even though it isn't that clear, the reflection off of the trees looks good in the photo above.

Then I found it !

The 35x optical zoom of my old SX40HS would get me much closer than what is seen in the photo above. But the only way I could get a clear picture was to use aperture priority. I don't know how or why, but it worked with that camera.

I switched to the 250 mm lens to get closer. But aperture priority didn't produce the same results on the SL3. Since I'm not sure what I'm doing, (or more importantly, why I'm doing it), I started turning dials and pressing buttons to see what would happen.

With the SL3 and the 250 mm lens, the only way I could get a clear piture was to use shutter speed priority and crank the shutter speed up as high as it would go. The results surprised me.

The 250 mm lens can only zoom in so far. But the picture still looks clear after cropping.

Thank you large APS-C sensor !

Also thank you good quality lens !

The results were more than I had hoped for and surprised me.

I was concerned about losing my ability to zoom in long distances when upgrading the camera.

But the larger sensor and better quality lens have eased my fears.