How to shoot the moon?

lovely planet · December 30, 2009

Tomorrow is a rare New Year's eve full moon night and I would love to attempt to shoot it. Can anyone help suggest techniques and settings? I have a Nikon D80 with a wide angle lens (35-70mm) and zoom lens (70-210mm).

How do you guys get those gorgeous moon shots?

Thanks for all your help.
U

pathfinder · December 30, 2009

The moon is a sunlit object and thus is very bright in the night darkened sky. One way of estimating the exposure for the moon is the Sunny 16 Rule which I wrote about here Once you have a starting point for exposure, try varying it + and - 1 stop or so. You will want the histogram to the right, but without blowing the highlights.

Camera light meters do a very poor job of estimating exposure for moon shots, unless you have a very long lens that fills the frame with the moon image almost entirely.

Use a tripod, keep you exposure as short as possible, as the moon is a moving target. Within 30 seconds there will be noticeable movement of the moon in your viewfinder. Use Mirror lock up for the best images.

For wide angles you will usually need two exposures, one for the landscape and one for the moon, as the exposures will be quite different, since the moon is usually sunlit, and the landscape is in the deep shade of night.

Photog4Christ · December 30, 2009

Since the low (here in VA) is expected to be in the upper 20's, I'll just wait for everyone else to post their images.

lovely planet · December 30, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

The moon is a sunlit object and thus is very bright in the night darkened sky. One way of estimating the exposure for the moon is the Sunny 16 Rule which I wrote about here Once you have a starting point for exposure, try varying it + and - 1 stop or so. You will want the histogram to the right, but without blowing the highlights.

Camera light meters do a very poor job of estimating exposure for moon shots, unless you have a very long lens that fills the frame with the moon image almost entirely.

Use a tripod, keep you exposure as short as possible, as the moon is a moving target. Within 30 seconds there will be noticeable movement of the moon in your viewfinder. Use Mirror lock up for the best images.

For wide angles you will usually need two exposures, one for the landscape and one for the moon, as the exposures will be quite different, since the moon is usually sunlit, and the landscape is in the deep shade of night.

Pathfinder - Thank you so much for the pointers. Do you think my Zoom lens will be sufficient to get a good close up or am I dreaming?

pathfinder · December 30, 2009

I think you will be disappointed by how small a full moon will look in the frame with a 200mm lens. But that is just my opinion.

Here is my reason - most of the images you see here on dgrin of the moon have been cropped significantly. Even a 400 - 500mm lens does not seem that long, when shooting the moon.

Here is a full, uncropped frame from my 50D ( an APS sensored body with a 1.6x Mag factor ) - all of the 3168 x 4752 pixels - with a 1120mm lens - 800mm with a 1.4x TC.

Here is a full frame image I shot in October of 2003 with the then brand new Canon 10D which had 2048 x 3072 pixels in its sensor. With a 300mm lens, without any cropping, this is the result

Googling "photographing the moon" gave me these results - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=photographing+the+moon&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

This link, found on the googling above, demonstrates the approximate image size you can expect with a given focal length. The images look similar in size to the ones I posted above.

Art Scott · December 30, 2009

hoping the cloud cover here goes way so i can shoot the moon tomorrow night also.........................

BizShotz · December 30, 2009

Me too, insufficient lens and all! BTW - Happy New Year Dgrinners!

craig_d · December 30, 2009

pathfinder wrote:

Camera light meters do a very poor job of estimating exposure for moon shots, unless you have a very long lens that fills the frame with the moon image almost entirely.

Use a tripod, keep you exposure as short as possible, as the moon is a moving target. Within 30 seconds there will be noticeable movement of the moon in your viewfinder. Use Mirror lock up for the best images.

Well, if you are just taking a picture of the moon itself at 200mm or more, I find with a Canon 5D Mark II that spot metering does a reasonable job. About +1 EV exposure compensation is usually best. Obviously the default evaluative metering mode will not work well.

I'm not sure why one would need a tripod or mirror lockup. The last time I shot a full moon, the exposure was only 1/1000 sec. (ISO 400, f/5.6 at 280mm, using an EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS plus a 1.4x TC).

Tracker · December 31, 2009

I used pathfinder's Sunny 16 (thank you!) as a starting point last night and got this shooting manual, f/16, 1/800, ISO1600, 200mm, heavily cropped.

pathfinder · January 3, 2010

My shot from New Years Eve - 50D, tripod, etc - uncropped image, full APS image

LiquidAir · January 3, 2010

I shot this a couple years ago by hand-holding the camera in the focal plane of a small refractive astronomical telescope. Give or take the lens was 900mm at f/11. It works, but I don't really recommend this technique. It is difficult to keep the sensor parallel to the focal plane and I was cleaning dust bunnies out of my camera for a week.

kdog · January 3, 2010

pathfinder wrote:

My shot from New Years Eve - 50D, tripod, etc - uncropped image, full APS image

What's the 100% crop look like? I shot this yesterday morning. Canon 500 + TC1.4 on a 40D.

craig_d · January 3, 2010

Beautiful shot, kdog. Which 1.4x TC are you using, the Canon EF Extender II, or a third party one? I have the Canon one and I've been pretty happy with the results I get from it.

In my own moon shots (at much shorter focal lengths than yours, unfortunately), I usually like to raise the black level to bring out more detail in the lunar surface and make the mares a bit darker. Here's a recent full-moon example (not from the recent blue moon, though), taken with my 5D Mark II and the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS with Canon's 1.4x TC:

kdog · January 3, 2010

Thanks, Craig. That was with the Canon TC1.4x. I actually own Kenko and Tamron TC1.4's as well. I bought all of those to try to reproduce the results folks claimed they were getting using autofocus on 400mm lenses and taping the TCs so they are non-reporting. After two bodies, two different 400mm lenses, and three different TCs, I decided these claims were greatly exaggerated (I really wanted to make this work.) I haven't done an optical comparison of the TCs, but the Canon TC's build quality is so much better than the Kenko Pro, that's the one I always use. I'm sure it's better optically as well, especially towards the edges. I used to stack the Canon and Kenko TCs with the 400 F5.6 for moon shots, using manual focus with LiveView. I got excellent results with that combination, almost as good as what you see here.

I actually had raised the black point on that shot, but probably could have raised it some more. Too much, and the shadows start creeping in from the perimeter.

The 5KMII is obviously at a disadvantage for moon shots. A 1.6 crop body is the only way to go. Your moon looks good, but at that size it's hard to tell. Looks like it might need a little sharpening, but again it's hard tell.

Cheers,
-joel

rwells · January 5, 2010

Joel,

Your not THAT far from me. How come your moon shots are flipped horizontally?

kdog · January 5, 2010

rwells wrote:

Joel,

Your not THAT far from me. How come your moon shots are flipped horizontally?

Maybe because I shot mine in the AM just before dawn and you shoot yours at night?

How to shoot the moon?

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