Holloween Moon

kdog

We've had a few moon shots recently in this forum, and I guess moon shots are nature, right?

Hand held, with Canon 100-400IS zoom, wide open. Arizona has nice clear skies. :wink



Cheers,
-joel

Harryb

kdog wrote:

We've had a few moon shots recently in this forum, and I guess moon shots are nature, right?

Hand held, with Canon 100-400IS zoom, wide open. Arizona has nice clear skies.

Cheers,
-joel

Terrific shot Joel but I'm going to go with Other Cool Shots as the right forum for it.

kdog

Harryb wrote:

Terrific shot Joel but I'm going to go with Other Cool Shots as the right forum for it.

Fair enough. Thanks, Harry.

-joel

Awais Yaqub

Cool shot Joel ! loved it

kdog

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Cool shot Joel ! loved it

Thank you very much, Awais. I'm glad you enjoyed it and I appreciate the feedback.

Regards,
-joel

Ric Grupe

Very crisp, clean image, Joel.:D

Where's the witch?

Rhuarc

So this was taken without being hooked up to a telescope or anything? I've always wanted to take shots like this, but I was under the impressiont aht to get good moon shots you had to hook it up to a telescope.

Great shot!!

Skippy

kdog wrote:

We've had a few moon shots recently in this forum, and I guess moon shots are nature, right?

Hand held, with Canon 100-400IS zoom, wide open. Arizona has nice clear skies.

Cheers,
-joel

This is a beauty Joel, gosh look at all those markings on the moon, and you hand held it too wow... you got is pretty dang sharp for a hand held

I've tried to shoot the moon but what you see is not what you get, I can't figure out how you expose it, it's usually wayyyyyyy over exposed, or underexposed when I try.

Thanks for sharing Joel ....... Skippy (Australia)

kdog

Ric Grupe wrote:

Very crisp, clean image, Joel.:D

Where's the witch?

Doh! Forgot the witch....

Thanks, Ric.

-joel

kdog

Thanks, Rhuarc and Skippy. I appreciate the compliments.

Skippy, getting the proper exposure on a moon shot is everthing. Fortunately, it's simple to do. You want spot metering. On the 20D it's called partial metering and denoted by the little icon that looks like this: () (but rotated 90 degrees). Use the center focus point, and you're good to go. I use AV, wide open, and 400 ISO. Just point and shoot.

I've tried stopping down to a smaller aperature, but really couldn't see much of an improvement. The IS on the 100-400 really helps with the hand holding. You might need a tripod for best results with your 400mm prime. Post your results.

Thanks again for your comments.

-joel

pathfinder

Skippy wrote:

I've tried to shoot the moon but what you see is not what you get, I can't figure out how you expose it, it's usually wayyyyyyy over exposed, or underexposed when I try.

...... Skippy (Australia)

Skippy, I posted a thread about shooting outdoor subjects without a lightmeter a while [URL="http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=30232&highlight=moon+exposure]back[/URL].
This is pertinent, because the moon IS a sunlit object. A rather brightly lit sunlit object in a large field of very black space, that usually confuses light meters badly.

Basically, the Sunny 16 rule says that a subject on full sunlight will be properly exposed by shooting at f16 and setting the shutter speed at 1/ISO, or for ISO 100 at 1/100th. You can alter the exposure with equivalent exposures as seen in this table



So to start for the moon - f16, 1/100th at ISO 100, or the same exposure value (EV) f5.6 1/1000th for a faster shutter speed. This should be prettty close depending on the water vapor and haze in the atmosphere.

kdog

pathfinder wrote:

So to start for the moon - f16, 1/100th at ISO 100, or the same exposure value (EV) f5.6 1/1000th for a faster shutter speed. This should be prettty close depending on the water vapor and haze in the atmosphere.

Pathfinder,

Your numbers differ wildly from mine. The shot you see above is F5.6, 1/400s, ISO400. Those settings are typical in my experience. That's a factor of 10 times slower than what you suggest. My first reaction was that your numbers couldn't possibly work. But then I visited your gallery, and see that you've gotten satisfactory results with those numbers.

I've done some experimentation tonight. By setting an exposure compensation of -2, I achieved a shutter speed of 1/2000, which is half of what you suggested. The shot came out underexposed. I did get acceptable results at -1 stop compensation. However, I still could not achieve the clarity of the shot I got last night though which used my usual partial metering setting. Of course, there may be atmospheric differences as well.

Nevertheless, I'm fairly confident that your shots could be improved by exposing a stop or two to the right over what the Sunny16 rule would suggest.

Regards,
-joel

pathfinder

Not sure what 's up either, kdog. But I would recommend shooting in Manual rather than AV or Auto with +/- EC.

Shay's Online Moon Exposure Computer ( courtesy of dgrin's own Shay Stephens ) suggests f4.5 1/1000 ISO 100 for a full moon which is within a half stop of my rec'd f5.6 at 1/1000th for ISO 100.

The basic accuracy of Sunny 16 is usually less than 1/2 stop, and the moon is sunlit, even if it is 200,000 miles away. I find I have to alter the expsoure =/- 1 stop or so depending on how low the moon is to the horizon and how hazy the air is.

Here's a great article about shooting the moon, and it basically suggests using Sunny 16 with maybe a 1/2 stop boost in exposure since the moon maybe a little brighter than neutral 16% gray. It goes into great detail about exposure and why meters fail.

Here is a great article that goes into more detail about the changing illumination of the moon as the phase of the moon varies, and as its height height above the horizon changes as well.

Google - moon exposure - and these and other links pop up.

Here's one I posted on previously here on dgrin with several shots demonstrating shooting the moon, including one with a hand held P&S camera shooting through binoculars.

There have been many threads of moon shots here on dgrin

kdog

Later that same evening...



(my friend Darrell had some fun with the original shot....)

pathfinder

Very nicely done.