Moon shot?

Little Wombat

This is the first picture I'm posting... the second day with the Canon S3! I'm not very satisfied with this shot though... Can anyone give me some feedback on how to improve it?

Thanks.

wolfejm

Go manual
I shot one of these the other night and had the same problem - moon was a big blob. Here are the two things that made the difference for me:

1. Use a tripod, you won't need super long exposures, but it helps.
2. Go manual on the exposure. The moon is much too bright relative to everything else - your auto exposure is blowing out the highlights. Try dialing back the settings manually until you get a good exposure. I did well around F8 and 1/100. The joy of digital is that you get immediate feedback and can try try again.

Good luck,
Jeff

pathfinder

Jack,

Shooting the moon with a P&S can be tough. You MUST shoot in manual mode where you set the aperture and the shutter speed. A good tripod will help a lot also.

This topic has been discussed here on dgrin quite a bit. If you search here on dgrin or google for moon on dgrin you should find a bunch of links with good information.

To get you started here are three links

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2432&page=4&highlight=exposure+moon+Pathfinder

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=8563&highlight=exposure+moon+Pathfinder

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=11650&highlight=moon+Sunny

rorytate

Jack,

the moon has seduced me as well as most folks here. Once I got the exposure reasonably well bracketed for the big fat harvest moon floating up off the horizon edge, I became more interested in various foreground/background treatments, with the moon being just one of the parts. But it was important to me to have the moon's features well defined no matter whatever else was in the photo. Well...! I never could get a real good exposure for both the foreground/background and the moon. Moon is just too dang bright. So I resorted to exposing first for just the moon, and then a second photo, exposed for the foreground - all on a tripod, obviously, with an electronic shutter release. Didn't use the mirror lockup.

Then, as you may have guessed, I'd blend both images in Photoshop. I was always careful to let everyone know that this is what I did to compensate for the huge dynamic range. No one had a problem with that, as they had all seen the same scene when it was originally taken.

The shot below is basically just as you'd see it in reality - harvest moon coming off the horizon and the tree backlit by the soft lights from a resort lodge. But it was a 2 shot composite. Must have sold about 50 prints the next day.




Now I'm sure there are scenes that don't require 2 differently exposed parts and I'd like to see them and learn more about all this.

Little Wombat

rorytate wrote:

Jack,

the moon has seduced me as well as most folks here. Once I got the exposure reasonably well bracketed for the big fat harvest moon floating up off the horizon edge, I became more interested in various foreground/background treatments, with the moon being just one of the parts. But it was important to me to have the moon's features well defined no matter whatever else was in the photo. Well...! I never could get a real good exposure for both the foreground/background and the moon. Moon is just too dang bright. So I resorted to exposing first for just the moon, and then a second photo, exposed for the foreground - all on a tripod, obviously, with an electronic shutter release. Didn't use the mirror lockup.

Then, as you may have guessed, I'd blend both images in Photoshop. I was always careful to let everyone know that this is what I did to compensate for the huge dynamic range. No one had a problem with that, as they had all seen the same scene when it was originally taken.

The shot below is basically just as you'd see it in reality - harvest moon coming off the horizon and the tree backlit by the soft lights from a resort lodge. But it was a 2 shot composite. Must have sold about 50 prints the next day.




Now I'm sure there are scenes that don't require 2 differently exposed parts and I'd like to see them and learn more about all this.

To sum it up in one word - WOW!

Little Wombat

Thanks, Jeff. I was actually on my way home from work, so no tripod, but I've taken to carrying the camera with me at all times for those spontaneous sessions

Pathfinder, I checked out the links... Thanks. I like the way those photos enhanced the whole 3D texture of the moon.