Northern California Backwater

[Wizard1929]

I'm truly an amatuer, but I got a pretty good shot of the moon by following someone else's settings. Sorry, but I don't remember whose, so I cannot give credit where it is due. I have a Dimage A200 and here are the settings he/she/I used:

3/4 moon
Manual Mode
1/200 Shutter
ISO 100
Aperture F/5.6
Zoomed to 200 mm
I do not remember the focus setting, whether it was manual or just set to infinity.

I don't see a way to post my my image. It was taken at 3264 X 2448 Fine. All I did was crop it to size. I am very pleased with the result.

[Lisa Nikodym]

If you are using a tripod, you can take two exposures, one with the moon properly exposed (which makes the rest too dark), and one with the rest properly exposed (which makes the moon blown out), then blend the two in Photoshop (or whatever your favorite photo manipulation program is).  I think there's a tutorial someone on this site (not the forum, but Michael's tutorials) that explains this technique.

Lisa

[Paul Sumi]

I should have read this thread before last evening.  Knowing that the evening BEFORE full moon is the best time is very helpful.  I was at the Getty Museum here in Los Angeles to shoot the full moon rise:



Because of the haze, neither the sunny 16 or 11 rule would have worked until the moon cleared the smog.  The Getty prohibits tripods so I was hand-holding at 1/15 sec and f/4 at ISO 1600 (Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS zoom with 1.4X TC).  The image stabilization saved my b###.

Paul

[queenpictoria]

Hello.

Just doing some night photography.
How could I have done this better.

Manual
f2.8
ISO 400
shutter 10 sec.
 
The moon is blown out.
http://www.queenpictoria.com/images/1/QPBackChannel5.jpg

Thanks,
queenpictoria
http://www.queenpictoria.com

[Jack Flesher]

Sunny 16...    

is an important "rule" in photography -- and one that works.  

It states that the proper exposure for an object lit by the Sun (at noon, near sea level and on the equator, but almost anywhere on civilized Earth is about close enough ) will be f16 at a shutter speed equal to the reciprocal of the ISO speed.

Hence, with ISO 100 film or digital, the proper exposure for a sunlit photo would be 1/100th at f16 or equivalent; 1/200th at f11, 1/400th at f8, etc.

And what is Mr. Moon lit by?  

That's right, the Sun!  So a proper exposure for the moon is Sunny 16, but you can generally still hold enough detail in it at 1 stop over, so you can use Sunny 11 too.  

Cheers,

[Geoff Wittig]

There is a narrow window of opportunity, only a few minutes wide, when the moon and the foreground can both be captured with detail in one shot. Too early and the moon is dull compared to sunlit terrain; too late and it's blown out white against the sky. One day before official full moon is generally ideal if you want to capture detail in the moon just above the eastern horizon at sunset, with the horizon also properly exposed. As the moon wanes, it will be progressively higher in the sky when its exposure matches the landscape.
The only way around this dilemma is to use a technique as nniko describes. Photoshop's shadow/highlight feature will retrieve some detail from a single exposure, but it can only do so much. Two or more tripod-mounted shots identical except for exposure (keeping aperture constant and shifting shutter speed to avoid weird depth of field changes) can be blended either manually using layers or using CS2's HDR feature to get detail simultaneously in moon, sky and foreground. It works very well if  you're careful with technique.