Shooting the mysterious Moon is a frequently discussed photography topic. For a Moon in a cloudless sky, the shooting pretty much is a matter of trivial exercise in term of exposure determination. We have some general tips for moon shooting. The following is the Moon shot with 1/640s f/8 and ISO 200.
It becomes challenging when you want to photograph the Moon behind the veil of the clouds. The reason? At night the Moon is so much brighter than the clouds, a proper exposure of the clouds will pretty much gurantee a blown-out Moon, just like the title image of this post, which was shot with 1/3s f/3.5 at ISO 200 -0.7EV. (It may be a good practice if you want to count the exposure differences between the two shots in stops or EV.)
Are there ways to preserve the details of the Moon surface while properly exposing the clouds? Read More…
Posted in
Tips and techniques on January 2nd, 2010.
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It was full moon again the day before yesterday. I setup my Nikon D200 with Sigma 100-300 f/4 and a Sigma 1.4x TC on a tripod in my front yard and took some moon shots. One of the test I did was trying to find out if the “sunny f/16″ rule can be used for the full moon exposure.
Since I was shooting at ISO200, the exposure should be 1/200s and f/16 according to the “sunny f/16″ rule. However I didn’t want to shoot at f/16, so I opened up the aperture by two stops to f/8. Correspondingly, I increased the shutter speed by 2 stops from 1/200s to 1/800s. As shown in the picture above, the moon taken using the “sunny f/16″ rule looks a little bit dark but it retains the details of the moon surface. I then shoot an 1EV/step bracketing series. 1/500s and f/9 is a third stop stop overexposure than the “sunny f/16″, 1/250s and f/9 is 1 and 1/3 stops overexposure, and 1/125s and f/9 is 2 and 1/3 stops overexposure. Which one is the perfect exposure? 1/125s and f/9 is definitely not. The details in the highlight was blown out. The final conclusion may be dependent on personal taste. It is probably somewhere between the “sunny f/16″ and approximately 1 and 2/3 stops more exposure.
Just like all other “rules”, this test is only relevant to my specific test conducted at the specific time and location under the specific atmospheric conditions using my camera and lens. When it comes to your own full moon shooting, you may find that the perfect exposure is off more or less depending on various factors. For more detailed moon shooting tips, please read my previous post .
Posted in
Tips and techniques on September 28th, 2007.
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