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04/13/2006 03:35:30 AM · #1 |
I'm new to photography.... I think the pictures will prove that. They could have been oooooooooo so much nicer. A rainbow around the moon, and I took? Any suggestions for night pictures like this in the future?
//almoststealing.com/1.jpg
//almoststealing.com/2.jpg
Message edited by author 2006-04-13 03:35:55. |
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04/13/2006 03:49:07 AM · #2 |
| I have never done night pics .. but I liked your first one :) |
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04/13/2006 03:52:16 AM · #3 |
My first few (not so few actually... I'm a slow learner) moon shots were exactly like yours. The simple fact is that the moon is a ridiculously bright object, much brighter than we would assume.
It has an albedo of around 0.07, meaning it reflects about 7% of the light hitting it. That's 7% of the brightness of the sun, which is still Really bright.
What this means is that you need to cut the light down a whole lot. I can see that you took these photos with an aperature of f/5.6 (this is quite open, allowing alot of light in) and at a speed of 1/6th of a second which is a very long shutter speed. If you were trusting your camera's light meter, it was being fooled because it was trying to balance out the other 95% of the photo which was black. Don't trust your light meter in these situations, always under expose.
I took this photo the other night:
I was also at f/5.6 but my shutter speed was at 1/800th of a second. Even at that, it was too bright and I had to tone it down in photoshop.
So my suggestion to you is this, get to know your camera's light meter very well. When you've adjusted your settings and it is displaying in the middle, under-expose by at least 2 stops (if not more, there's a whole lot of black space in that composition) and you will start getting closer to capturing the moon accurately. |
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04/13/2006 03:55:54 AM · #4 |
I find that the sunny 16 rule works well for shots of the moon. The light from the moon is reflectd sunlight, and auto exposure at night will set for the dark sky and overexpose the moon.
The sunny 16 rule is an old rule of thumb for ev in bright daylight..for iso 100..ev is f16 at 100th sec...set your camera to this, and shoot the moon again.
doubling works of course....double any of the values, and halve any other...ie 200th sec at f8 etc....
best of luck. |
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04/13/2006 03:59:33 AM · #5 |
I love moon captures. I was able to get this one on April 3rd.
This one on April 10th.
And some of my older moon pic's.
   
When I take pictures of the moon I just play around with settings and enjoy. Some come out good and some, well..... :)
-SDW
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04/13/2006 04:30:39 AM · #6 |
I love all of the pictures. I am going to actually read the book that came with the camera tomorrow (LOL). Thank you so much for your suggestions. I have alot to learn but I am so glad I found this place.
Thank you all again,
chris
I always catch the typos after I hit post... grrrr
Message edited by author 2006-04-13 04:31:23. |
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04/13/2006 04:31:55 AM · #7 |
Originally posted by ShorterThanJesus:
My first few (not so few actually... I'm a slow learner) moon shots were exactly like yours. The simple fact is that the moon is a ridiculously bright object, much brighter than we would assume.
It has an albedo of around 0.07, meaning it reflects about 7% of the light hitting it. That's 7% of the brightness of the sun, which is still Really bright.
What this means is that you need to cut the light down a whole lot. I can see that you took these photos with an aperature of f/5.6 (this is quite open, allowing alot of light in) and at a speed of 1/6th of a second which is a very long shutter speed. If you were trusting your camera's light meter, it was being fooled because it was trying to balance out the other 95% of the photo which was black. Don't trust your light meter in these situations, always under expose.
I took this photo the other night:
I was also at f/5.6 but my shutter speed was at 1/800th of a second. Even at that, it was too bright and I had to tone it down in photoshop.
So my suggestion to you is this, get to know your camera's light meter very well. When you've adjusted your settings and it is displaying in the middle, under-expose by at least 2 stops (if not more, there's a whole lot of black space in that composition) and you will start getting closer to capturing the moon accurately. |
The moon - Yes, dificult thing to photograph. Yesterday evening was full moon around here and I was outside having a smoke when I decided to give it a shot. well, by the time I got the tri-pod setup and the camera on, a massive cloud went in front of the moon - no shot. Will try again 2nite.
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04/13/2006 06:32:34 AM · #8 |
As "ShorterThanJesus" has said the moon is very bright but typically with the surrounding very dark background the camera has problems sorting this out. I tend to use "Shutter Priority" mode as in the following pictures.
The shots were taken with a 70- 200 lens with a 2x converter.
 This was taken at F/8, ISO 100, Shutter 1/125.
 This was taken at F/8, ISO 100, Shutter 1/80
At these setting the camera was flashing the Aperture indicating that this was a too fast shutter speed.
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04/13/2006 07:27:21 AM · #9 |
I have only taken a few photos of the moon and most of them have come out bad. Took this early one morning and once I had converted it to b&w I kind of liked it, its a bit on the small side!
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04/13/2006 07:35:10 AM · #10 |
This is my favorite moon shoot that I have ever taken.
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