Beginner Capturing the moon

shannensdaddy

shannensdaddy

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Hi Everybody
I tried earlier tonight to capture a full moon , but ran into difficulties .
The camera a D90 with a 18-105vr kit lens on a tripod and ran through various focus and shutter speeds with the iso cranked up and down a little from max , but I had like a blurred spot of to one side and the moon was focused through the viewfinder but out of focus when the picture was taken . I am a beginner so be blunt as its the only way I will learn .
View attachment 11411View attachment 11411 View attachment 11411 thanks ..
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Treat a moon shot as a daytime shot.

You need a pretty fast shutter speed or it'll be blown out like above

ISO 100 between f8-f11 Ish (Im happy to be corrected)
 
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Yes, the moon is lit by bright sunlight so you need the samne sort of exposure you'd sue for other objects lit by bright sunlight.

The "Sunny-16" rule is a good place to start: f/16, ISO 100, 100/th is a decent exposure in bright sunlight. To get the best out of your lens you'd probably want to use f/8 instead of f/1.6, which would push the shutter speed up to 1/400th at ISO 100. Start from there and tweak as necessary.

Remember to set the exposure in manual mode. Don't let your camera do the metering because it will get confused by the huge expanse of dark sky.

To get a good shot of the moon you need a long lens, but you've probably already worked that out. To fill the frame with your D90 you'd need a focal length of about 1800mm.
 
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Have you got a filter on the lens? That might be causing the ghost image.
 
I tried doing it on the cheap so bought one of these



It is a manual only lens so everything has to be done by guesswork but I did manage to get something like this with it with a 2x tele converter stuck on the end as can be seen in the above photo






One of the problems I came across is the closer you get to photograph the moon the quicker it moves across the heaven(or so it seems). So what I had to do in the end is predict the moons path and wait for it to come into shot. Then come another problem as in camera settings ,that also has to be in manual mode. I hate to think how many late dark nights , usually in the freezing cold when the sky is clear, to even get the first shot something like.

I have got other photos but put these 2 up to show what you can get with a cheap lens for under £200 new on ebay Plus getting a tele converter
What I would say is if using that lens you would find it takes no end of patience a firm tripod and lots of luck.
Clouds are another problem ie moon comes into shot- you have camera all set up and then a huge great cloud sods things up
 
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As Stewart said, the "sunny f/16" rule of thumb is a good starting point. What that rule says is that for a given ISO, use the reciprocal of the ISO as the shutter speed and set the aperture to f/16, so for ISO 200, use 1/200th @ f/16. Given that small apertures start bringing diffraction into the equation, I usually open up a stop to f/8 and use a faster shutter speed - in the case above, 1/400th. In the digital age, we have the capability to check the exposure and adjust our settings rather than having to bracket exposures and hope we got a couple of shots close enough!
Since the Moon is pretty much a monochrome subject, don't be afraid to use a higher ISO than usual and don't worry about the little extra noise that can introduce - unless pixel peeping, you're unlikely to notice it after conversion to B&W. That way, you can almost always handhold even long lenses. Taking the example above as a starting point, using ISO 800 and f/8, you've got a 1/1600th as a shutter speed.
I'm hoping my maths is right in the above examples, if not, please let me know and I'll correct it (and credit the corrections to the corrector!)
 
realspeed said:
I tried doing it on the cheap so bought one of these



It is a manual only lens so everything has to be done by guesswork but I did manage to get something like this with it with a 2x tele converter stuck on the end as can be seen in the above photo






One of the problems I came across is the closer you get to photograph the moon the quicker it moves across the heaven(or so it seems). So what I had to do in the end is predict the moons path and wait for it to come into shot. Then come another problem as in camera settings ,that also has to be in manual mode. I hate to think how many late dark nights , usually in the freezing cold when the sky is clear, to even get the first shot something like.

I have got other photos but put these 2 up to show what you can get with a cheap lens for under £200 new on ebay Plus getting a tele converter
What I would say is if using that lens you would find it takes no end of patience a firm tripod and lots of luck.
Clouds are another problem ie moon comes into shot- you have camera all set up and then a huge great cloud sods things up
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What lens is that?
 
Rob
the one I saw on ebay looks as if it now has been sold but this is what to look for or similar make, mine was sold as an Optica lens but several companies now sell them
With the doubler added boosts it to a max of 2600mm

Forgot to mention it is best supported in several places ie camers -lens tripod fixing place and if possible make up some other support as well further to the front as it can bend a bit fully extended or at least mine did. Its a huge beast to say the least but it did its job. Be careful not to look through windows half a mile away.;)

look on ebay for 650-2600mm-Telephoto-Zoom-Lens
 
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shannensdaddy said:
but I had like a blurred spot of to one side and the moon was focused through the viewfinder but out of focus when the picture was taken . I am a beginner so be blunt as its the only way I will learn .
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OK.. I'll be blunt. Take that "UV" filter off your lens and bin it. They will cause flare when shooting into the light, and REALLY bad flair and reflections when shooting anything like this. If you do any night time photography especially, do not use pointless, cheap filters. If you want to protect your lens, then use a lens cap when you're not shooting.

Stewart is correct. It's a sunlit object so "sunny 16" will get you close. This rule only applies when it's fairly high in the sky though. If it's very low down on the horizon, you will probably need more exposure, but start at ISO100, 1/125th at f16, and atmospheric conditions can make this vary quite wildly. In theory, "Sunny 16" is a good place to start, but be prepared to bracket. Do not use auto exposure, and do NOT trust the camera's meter.

If this is something you think you may be exploring more.... then the best way, without doubt, is using an astronomical telescope. It sounds extravagant, but you can get a fairly decent telescope for around the same price as that lens + converter Realspeed used above. No camera lens can rival the results you get from a telescope, and a cheap 650-2600mm things on Ebay are laughable in comparison.

This was using a £230 telescope. Click to view it larger.

Hh8QEaD.jpg




You'll need an adaptor to fit your camera, and you'll need to check if the scope you're interested in can achieve focus with a DSLR attached (some can't). Reflecting telescopes are best for shots like this, as they do not suffer from chromatic aberration. £200 to £3000 is what you're looking at.

Here's an ideal scope if astro photography interests you.

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/reflectors/skywatcher-explorer-150p-eq3-2.html

Be aware though.... Photographing anything but the moon or brightest stars will require driven and guided equatorial mounts, and they can be VERY expensive, but moon, larger planets, bright star clusters etc... all perfectly possible with this. You can spent £170 a completely rubbish camera lens that you wouldn't want to use for anything else, or you can spend a little more on a really great scope like this, and also delve into another hobby perhaps.
 
Nod said:
I'm hoping my maths is right in the above examples, if not, please let me know and I'll correct it (and credit the corrections to the corrector!)
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Not quite.
Nod said:
ISO 200, use 1/200th @ f/16
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OK so far...
Nod said:
I usually open up a stop to f/8 and use a faster shutter speed - in the case above, 1/400th.
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But f/16 to f/8 is two stops, so you should have ISO 200, 1/800th @ f/8.
Nod said:
ISO 800 and f/8, you've got a 1/1600th
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You're still a stop out, probably from the first mistake. This should be ISO 800, 1/3200th @ f/8.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that the exact exposure won't necessarily be this value, so reviewing and tweaking is the order of the day. And your advice about using f/8 and a high enough ISO to give you a decent shutter speed is spot on. But we may as well get the numbers right. ;)
 
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StewartR said:
Not quite.
OK so far...
But f/16 to f/8 is two stops, so you should have ISO 200, 1/800th @ f/8.
You're still a stop out, probably from the first mistake. This should be ISO 800, 1/3200th @ f/8.
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Academic. The sunny 16 rule is only a guide to correctly exposing the moon. I've had exposures vary quite dramatically from one night to the next, or from even hour to hour.


damianmkv said:
Try when it's not a full moon. This was taken with a 70-300 @ f5.6, 1/200s, iso400, handheld


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It makes no difference to exposure. The bits that are lit, are still lit by the sun... the same sun... which is the same distance from the moon (give or take a small margin). The settings you used above would still result in correct exposure if it was a full moon. Don't think that because a full moon is "brighter" that you need to stop down. It's not brighter. It gives off more light because as a light source it's bigger.... it illuminates the earth more, yes... but to correctly expose the moon itself, a quarter moon would require the same exposure as a full moon if it was in the same part of the sky in the same atmospheric conditions.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Academic. The sunny 16 rule is only a guide to correctly exposing the moon. I've had exposures vary quite dramatically from one night to the next, or from even hour to hour.
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Come on David, you could at least read to the end of my post before you jump in and "correct" me:
StewartR said:
I'll be the first to acknowledge that the exact exposure won't necessarily be this value, so reviewing and tweaking is the order of the day..... But we may as well get the numbers right. ;)
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StewartR said:
Come on David, you could at least read to the end of my post before you jump in and "correct" me:
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Apologies Stewart.. didn't see that.


The point of my post still stands though... Start with sunny 16, then check your histogram to get the main "peak" of the exposure slightly more than halfway to 2/3rds to the right, and you'll be pretty damned close.
 
Pookeyhead said:
OK.. I'll be blunt. Take that "UV" filter off your lens and bin it. They will cause flare when shooting into the light, and REALLY bad flair and reflections when shooting anything like this.
Click to expand...

While I'll agree with the first sentence and the first bit of the second, I have to disagree with the second part of the second sentence - flair is ALWAYS good!!! ;)

StewartR said:
Not quite.
OK so far...
But f/16 to f/8 is two stops, so you should have ISO 200, 1/800th @ f/8.
You're still a stop out, probably from the first mistake. This should be ISO 800, 1/3200th @ f/8.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that the exact exposure won't necessarily be this value, so reviewing and tweaking is the order of the day. And your advice about using f/8 and a high enough ISO to give you a decent shutter speed is spot on. But we may as well get the numbers right. ;)
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Thanks for the correction, Stewart, I've always got myself confused with the apertures being root 2 converted! Not so bad in these days where instant review and reshoot is possible but a royal PITA way back.
The advice given above to shoot when the Moon is off full is very good too - far more interesting to see the shadows thrown by the crater lips than a grey saucer with different grey circles on it!
 
Do remember that once a picture of the moon has been taken you then have to start looking around the sky for other planets and a " cheap" telescope would be struggling to get anything. That is why I sold that "ice cream" one and stuck to terra firma for pictures
 
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Just a bit of fun :) The moon looks grey, but in fact it's not, not quite. I did this by adding max colour saturation in Lightroom, then exporting as a TIFF and re-importing to add another dose of max saturation. I did that twice to get this.

ps I sometimes wonder if this is how scientists discover conclusive evidence of water and life on Mars... :D

Tamron 150-600 + Kenko 1.4x, Canon 7D. 1/125sec f/11, iso400.
 
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HoppyUK said:
Just a bit of fun :) The moon looks grey, but in fact it's not, not quite.
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Nope, it's not grey.. You can see it my shot further up. I went to great lengths to ensure that the colour of the moon was incredibly accurate, by measuring the colour temperature of the averaged light through the telescopes eyepiece!
 
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realspeed said:
Do remember that once a picture of the moon has been taken you then have to start looking around the sky for other planets and a " cheap" telescope would be struggling to get anything.
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Nope. That cheap scope I referred to, is a 6ich reflector. A perfectly respectable scope. Can view galaxies, nebulae, planets. While not up to the standard of some astro shots seen in here, the below images were taken with teh same £230 telescope. Scopes are cheap... what let's these images down is the guidance system of the mount... not the scope. But.... for £230.... here's what you can do.

NDdHnvW.jpg

2zNCRu9.jpg

lJ0OeZf.jpg

WiogsGI.jpg

sXyFCC1.jpg



Those required a cheap motor drive for the mount.. which only gives around 30 seconds before stars start to trail a bit, but stack enough 30 second subs and you can get some decent stuff. Not in the same league as @swag72 but she'll have a decent guided mount. But you'll be surprised what you can do with £230. I'm just very casual at this... once in a while... get interested in a big way, and £230 will go a long way, as Sarah will no doubt confirm. A 6" reflector is a respectable scope for anyone. Reflector telescopes are not that expensive.
 
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Wow David they're great. As you say, a bit of stacking and its amazing what you might be able to get out of a relatively cheap setup (everything's relative of course!)

With dark skies available to me quite easily, I'm a bit tempted...
 
David those shots are superb, very cool indeed.

I would love to do some shots like that but just never get chance and if i'm honest don't know exactly what gear I need as most of my gear purchased for the sole intention of paying for itself for work. :(

Awesome shots, do you have any more? :)
 
Not normally my cup oif tea this.. was shooting a football match the night before last.. really boring.. it was a clear sky so I took a shot or two..... full frame canon 1dx and canon 400.. settings on the fly as i had to be quick and get back to game.. so a bit blown out at bottom.. couple of test shots and setting change to f5 iso 320 and a 1000 shutter... I found the task simnple enough (sorry not showing off.. what I mean is.. maybe looking at this as too big a problem when its not) . take a test shot.. see moons too bright.. change settings until moon looks more exposed and thats it...

moon2.jpg
 
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None of these shots get close in though,they are all of the moon in full.Where are the really close up shots of craters in detail ?
 
shapeshifter said:
None of these shots get close in though,they are all of the moon in full.Where are the really close up shots of craters in detail ?
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You did not see my photos I put up then. Don't think one could get much closer. Obviously you have not attempted to photograph the moon so close, If you did you would understand the problems involved
 
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You b@7#@70, David! At the moment, I have problems staying awake much past 10pm but once I'm over that, I can see me NEEDING (!!!) a telescope, reasonable equatorial mount and camera adaptors as well as learning how to stack!
 
realspeed said:
You did not see my photos I put up then. Don't think one could get much closer. Obviously you have not attempted to photograph the moon so close, If you did you would understand the problems involved
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Yes I see them now.The first on is getting there but the ISO was 3200 so it has degraded the photo but it has got good reach.
 
shapeshifter said:
None of these shots get close in though,they are all of the moon in full.Where are the really close up shots of craters in detail ?
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You need a great deal of magnification for that. No camera lens will allow what you suggest... simply not possible I'm afraid. With scopes, you'd need a very long focal length scope indeed, and even then, at prime focus (replacing the eye piece with a camera body) it's still very difficult.

However... the moon image I posted further up the thread will stand a great deal of cropping, and I could extract a pretty good detailed image of individual craters from it. To do so without cropping would require a long focal length scope such a cassegrain reflector and a Barlow lens to magnify even further.
 
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shapeshifter said:
None of these shots get close in though,they are all of the moon in full.Where are the really close up shots of craters in detail ?
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Like David said.

As a comment though, I think some of the best moon shots I've seen are not close ups of the moon itself, let alone craters, but ones that include clouds or the moon as part of a silhouetted landscape. That kind of thing, much more evocative, and within relatively easy reach of 300-400mm-ish telephotos.

Where a lot of moon attempts fail IMHO is in trying to achieve detail, but without the necessary kit to do it well. So you end up cropping the heck out of an ordinary shot and the result looks about as interesting as the bowl of porridge it so closely resembles.
 
shapeshifter said:
None of these shots get close in though,they are all of the moon in full.Where are the really close up shots of craters in detail ?
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As others have said, it's not easy. Here's a "quick snapshot" I took a while ago which illustrates some of the difficulties.

This is an UNCROPPED image, taken with a Canon 5D, a Canon 800mm f/5.6 L IS lens, and two stacked 2x Extenders. So that's 3200mm actual focal length, with a maximum aperture of f/22. I think that's about as extreme as you can get with "ordinary" camera gear, ie without using a telescope.

It's not a great image. If I were doing it seriously I'd probably want to take a bit more care over it. But as I said this kind of thing is surprisingly difficult:
(a) You need really still atmosphere and no trace of haze or mist; I didn't quite have that.
(b) The use of stacked extenders degrades the image; I could probably correct it to some extent in Lightroom, but for this exercise I haven't bothered.
(c) Focussing is *really* hard. No autofocus at f/22, remember. And the lens is so long, you can't look through the camera and reach the focus ring at the same time. So the process is something like this:
- point lens at moon (this is harder than you'd think!!);
- wait for lens to stop vibrating;
- look through camera to see if it's in focus;
- reach forward and tweak focus ring slightly;
- wait for lens to stop vibrating;
- look through camera to see if it's in focus;
- reach forward and tweak focus ring slightly;
- wait for lens to stop vibrating;
- look through camera to see if it's in focus;
- reacquire moon because it's drifted out of the frame;
- wait for lens to stop vibrating;
- look through camera to see if it's in focus;
- reach forward and tweak focus ring slightly;
- wait for lens to stop vibrating;
- look through camera to see if it's in focus;
- reacquire moon because it's drifted out of the frame;
- wait for lens to stop vibrating;
- take the shot and hope for the best!
It would probably be easier to use a tethered shooting approach and use live view on a laptop/tablet screen to judge the focus, but I didn't do that either. Maybe next time!

382107_10151154171696794_1529322766_n.jpg
 
Very interesting thread. I have in the past spot metered off the moon and then applied - 3 E/V and got a reasonable image, a bit small though but looked ok with a bit of cropping. More of just an interesting experiment really other than anything serious. Something I have never repeated.
 
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View attachment 11684

This is hand held Nikon D7000 300mm+1.4 converter = 630mm eqiv on FF @ 500th sec F7.1 out of camera.Below is a crop not that much difference from the Canon 800mm and two 2x converters at 3200mm!



300mm+1.4 converter = 630mm on F F@ 500th sec F7.1
View attachment 11685
 
At screen size and resolution, there's unlikely to be much difference between the 2 shots but I would wager that the 800mm + converters shot would print better at larger sizes than the cropped shot from the 300mm whichever body was used!
 
Hope you don't mind if a forum newbie jumps in on this?

I've tried to shoot the moon with many cameras....

The exact setting seems to vary camera to camera....

I can only echo what people have said above...

The moon is very bright, you'll to be needing to stop down for any detail

The moon is moving very fast, that (coupled with its brightness) needs a fairly fast shutter speed.

The moon has a lot of detail, you'll want a low iso for it

The full moon is a big bright thing, the half moon offers better detail

As a starting point, I generally begin with f8, 1/125, spot metering, lowest iso, a tripod (!) and delayed shutter release (or remote release), on DSLRs it might be worth using the mirror lock setting... Also turn OFF any IS/VR when using a tripod, (which I forgot to do on the shot below)

The below is hardly the last word in celestial photography....

but FWIW, X-Pro1, (so APS-C) xc50-230 (cheap plastic lens I got free when I bought another Fuji!!), taken in waning daylight, in front of my house!!

DSCF4139_lzn by adzman_808, on Flickr
 
Adzman808 said:
The exact setting seems to vary camera to camera....
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You mean the settings that give good results, or the settings the camera suggests? If the latter, then of course, as different focal lengths and different meters will give different responses. You simply can not trust your camera's light meter in this situation (small bright thing against a black background). Even spot metering the moon will give a slightly underexposed shot, as it will try to render it 18%, or 15% grey depending on how the meter is calibrated, whereas the moon is a much lighter shade than that.





Adzman808 said:
The moon is moving very fast, that (coupled with its brightness) needs a fairly fast shutter speed.
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It's not THAT fast! The high shutter speed will be required to get correct exposure at decent apertures where the lens is sharpest, not to freeze it's movement. A high shutter speed will also combat camera shake.. but on a tripod with a long lens, it will take the moon a fair chunk of time to traverse from one side of the frame to the next.





Adzman808 said:
The full moon is a big bright thing, the half moon offers better detail
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Only because of the shadows long the terminator. Exposure for a half moon would be identical as that for a full moon. Imagine I took a shot of someone's face with the light directly next to the camera, and 5ft away and made a perfect exposure... then if if I moved the light directly to the person's left, but kept it 5ft away from the person, the exposure would be identical. Obviously half the face would be unlit, but the half that IS lit, will look the same. I imagine that's what you meant... and not that a full moon requires a different exposure, as that would be incorrect.
 
Pookeyhead said:
You mean the settings that give good results, or the settings the camera suggests? If the latter, then of course, as different focal lengths and different meters will give different responses. You simply can not trust your camera's light meter in this situation (small bright thing against a black background). Even spot metering the moon will give a slightly underexposed shot, as it will try to render it 18%, or 15% grey depending on how the meter is calibrated, whereas the moon is a much lighter shade than that.







It's not THAT fast! The high shutter speed will be required to get correct exposure at decent apertures where the lens is sharpest, not to freeze it's movement. A high shutter speed will also combat camera shake.. but on a tripod with a long lens, it will take the moon a fair chunk of time to traverse from one side of the frame to the next.







Only because of the shadows long the terminator. Exposure for a half moon would be identical as that for a full moon. Imagine I took a shot of someone's face with the light directly next to the camera, and 5ft away and made a perfect exposure... then if if I moved the light directly to the person's left, but kept it 5ft away from the person, the exposure would be identical. Obviously half the face would be unlit, but the half that IS lit, will look the same. I imagine that's what you meant... and not that a full moon requires a different exposure, as that would be incorrect.
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RE your first question = I mean the settings that give good results, not the ones suggested by the camera

RE your second = I think that 2,288mph is hardly sloth like ;-) and personally I wouldn't shoot it using a very small aperture & a slower shutter. YMMV.

I agree with your end statement, but I didn't say anything about exposing differently for a waxing/waning moon, just that a half lit moon shot makes for a nicer image
 
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