How to photograph the moon

[Pohled]

Hi,

Yesterday it was announced that we could see a super moon. Actually, nearby my house it was nothing much, just a bright full moon. But as I had already gone out so that I could capture the super moon I tried to photograph it, but the results weren't that good. For me it was hard to achieve the right exposure, regarding that the camera tends to meter the scene according to the dark background. The best shot I got was this one, no post-process (as I usually say, I haven't learned how to post-process yet )

[Shadowman]

I got some reasonably good shots with camera setting ISO 200, 1/30s, f/11. I 'll post later. What settings did you use?

[Brownbear]

Hi Johnathon,

Here is a great thread full of great tips and advice for photographing the moon, and some amazing images. Take a peek.

Full moon photography

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi, the moon isnt easy! the image below was shot as follows:

500mm
f8
1/250 s
200 iso

tripod
cable release
VR OFF!!!

it was still soft and ive shapenened it to buggery! and its a huge crop, so its back to the drawing board!

[Kodiak]

To avoid having over exposed pictures of the moon, use the spot meter in
your camera.

[csa mt]

•
To avoid having over exposed pictures of the moon, use the spot meter in
your camera.

Yes indeed! I got this one just using the "P" setting, spot metering. Tripod used. The full moon does not show the details as well as half moon, etc.

[ied]

That is great Carol, I've never attempted night photography. Would be fun to try I'm sure.

Irene

[Kodiak]

The full moon does not show the details as well as half moon, etc.

Hey Carol, my question is: "Do you know why?"

[Mark von Kanel]

Hey Carol, my question is: "Do you know why?"

nope, do tell....

[Kodiak]

nope, do tell....

I do not want to teach you like… with glasses on the tip of the nose and the
pointing finger high up but more like a buddy passing on views to an other.

The only time we have a full moon is when our planet is between the sun and
the moon. Pretty much like having an "on camera" flash. Then, the moon is
evenly lit quite like a face some three to six feet in front of your lens!

Don't let the 8 light seconds of the moon or the 8 light minutes of the sun fool
you: light is light, a light month or a light year… it is always light.

The half moon… ok, I see on your face that you understood or new that already!

Happy moon gazing!

[Mark von Kanel]

I do not want to teach you like… with glasses on the tip of the nose and the
pointing finger high up but more like a buddy passing on views to an other.

The only time we have a full moon is when our planet is between the sun and
the moon. Pretty much like having an "on camera" flash. Then, the moon is
evenly lit quite like a face some three to six feet in front of your lens!

Don't let the 8 light seconds of the moon or the 8 light minutes of the sun fool
you: light is light, a light month or a light year… it is always light.

The half moon… ok, I see on your face that you understood or new that already!

Happy moon gazing!

Yup, i get it! id just never thought about it

[Pohled]

I got some reasonably good shots with camera setting ISO 200, 1/30s, f/11. I 'll post later. What settings did you use?

ISO 100 f/22 1/3s 250mm
-------
Kodiak, I am not sure if I really understood the explanation about the full moon and the half moon =D
--

Thank you all for the responses!

[rpcrowe]

The moon is lit by the sun... You can usually get pretty close in exposure by using the "Rule of Sunny 16", shooting at f/16 with your shutter speed being the reciprocal of your ISO (as an example, shooting with ISO 100, the exposure would be around 1/100 (reciprocal of 100) second at f/16.

To ensure the very best capture, I would bracket the exposures with the 1/100 @ f/16, and shoot at say 1/50 @ f/16 and 1/200 @ f/16, or the equivalent exposure at the sweet spot of your lens (usually 2-stops smaller than maximum). That would be 1/400 @ f/8 (for an f/4 lens) with additional bracketing at 1/200 @ f/8 and 1/800 @ f/8.

I am a firm believer in bracketing exposures for events which do not occur often, like super moons. After-all, it's not like shooting film in which every frame cost you money...

If you use your cameras built-in meter, you will (even with spot metering) be averaging out the light from the bright moon with the dark sky around it and risk the probability of overexposing the moon. If you could fill the metering spot area completely with the moon, the resulting exposure would not be accurate because it would reduce the light of the moon to about an 18% gray.

Shooting with a long focal length lens will improve your chances of getting a good shot. However, even my 400mm f/5.6L lens could be a lot longer to fill the frame with the moon itself. Shooting with shorter focal lengths ends up with rather small moons in a vast sky, requiring extensive cropping...

[Kodiak]

Kodiak, I am not sure if I really understood the explanation about the full moon and the half moon

Alright then, I'll go on where I took off:

The half moon…

At half moon, the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are not in a straight line but say more
at 90°… either side of the Earth. So that the craters are casting more shadows the
closer you get towards the unlit side of the Moon.

It is precisely the presence of these shadows that renders the better images because
of the consequent observable contrast with the high keys. No contrast=no details in normal
light conditions.

Student at the Nature Sciences Faculty /dept. Cosmology, I learned that there are simple
spectrographic technical approaches to accentuate the "readability" of full Moon reflected
lights. But this is not within the scope of this answer.

[csa mt]

Hey Carol, my question is: "Do you know why?"

Indeed I did know the answer, from being involved with Astronomy for many years; but you answered before I came back to the thread.

[csa mt]

Irene, give night photography a try! The moon is a great place to start. One other thing I've done with success, if I am not using spot metering; I simply move the metering area off the moon, so that half of the area is the dark sky, and the other half is the moon; while holding the shutter halfway down to retain the reading, I then move back to the moon and take the shot.

[Kodiak]

… but you answered before I came back to the thread.

Sorry to have stolen your scoop… but my fault was to not have read who asked me to answer!

[csa mt]

The only scoop I care about is if it's ice cream!

[Kodiak]

Yes! …strawberries & chocolate!

[flashback]

I'll offer up three things:
http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases.phtml it's copyrighted so I couldn't just C&P the graphic
Super Moon (tweaked a bit but it's okay for what it is)


This was hand held, taken with my old Nikon Coolpix P500, some PP, of course.