Those moon photos look fantastic, but how did you take them?
when i try to take photos of the moon it always just comes out as a completly white disc and blurry, is there a special way that you get good photos of the moon?
I took lots of photos of the lunar eclipse, but they were nowhere near as good as the ones Hamish took. I used a digital camera, 300mm zoom lens, as well as a tripod. I set the ISO to 1600 and still found I had a shutter speed of 4 or 5 seconds. That was enough to make most images too blurry, and I had a further problem with 'ghost' images of the moon popping up on other parts of the picture. In the end, I only got one halfway decent picture, and that was only after photoshopping.
Yes, that moon picture is really good. I think the 1/125s at f5.6 depends on the ISO though.
A good starting point for exposure is the "sunny 16" rule. The moon is a sunlit object and can be exposed very close to these values. At ISO 100 and aperture of f16 expose with a shutter speed which is the reciprocal of the ISO value.
eg At ISO 100 and f16 expose at 1/100s. If you move aperture down two stops to f8, move shutter speed up 2 stops to 1/400s. This will get you quite close, within a stop or two.
Paddy, the Moon moves surprisingly quickly and even a shutter speed of 1/15s will blur it, even on the sturdiest tripod.
the Moon moves surprisingly quickly and even a shutter speed of 1/15s will blur it, even on the sturdiest tripod.
Which makes Hamish's montage all the better, since during the eclipse the brightness of the moon was significantly less than at other times. Also means the advice on exposure in the previous posts only applies to normal conditions and not during an eclipse, so bear that in mind if you're trying to capture other anomolies.
Richard G., that's a good point about the dimmer light during an eclipse. You lot got me searching around now for decent images I've seen recently - here's a good one from a blogging buddy of ours though I think I still prefer Hamish's shot, partly due to the sheer perseverance involved in tabulating the shots so accurately.
Camera Olympus c8080wz. lens 28-140mm (35mm equiv) so 5x optical zoom, then another 3x digital zoom which would give equivilent of 420mm. I used all the digital zoom and everything that I could. so with maximum image size that my camera does 3264x2448 the moon had a diameter of 365pixels and was rubbish quality.
The first 3 shots were done handheld outside my house, all the other shots were with my camera placed on the road outside my house and the swing out display used to support my camera at the right angle. I mostly avoided camera shake due to the lag time from pressing the button to the taking of the picture. The camera was in a different place on the road each time due to me running inside downloading my pictures and uploading them to my website and running outside again to get the next photo. also the moon moves across the sky so i had to avoid chimney pots and electricity wires.
I manually set the exposure into the camera, autoexposure doesn't work when taking something so bright and so small, also i cn keep the same exposure for many shots even after turning the camera off.
detailed below are the exposures for each photo, i kept the aperture set at f3.5 for all but the very last photo.
21:57 --> ISO 160, 1/400sec @ f3.5 22:17 --> ISO 100, 1/500sec @ f3.5 22:27 --> ISO 125, 1/400sec @ f3.5 22:37 --> ISO 400, 1/5sec @ f3.5 22:47 --> ISO 400, 1/5sec @ f3.5 22:57 --> ISO 400, 1/2sec @ f3.5 23:07 --> ISO 400, 1/2sec @ f3.5 23:17 --> ISO 400, 1/2sec @ f3.5 23:26 --> ISO 400, 1/2sec @ f3.5 23:29 --> ISO 400, 2sec @ f3.5 23:37 --> ISO 400, 1/2sec @ f3.5 23:47 --> ISO 400, 1/2sec @ f3.5 23:57 --> ISO 400, 1/2sec @ f3.5 00:17 --> ISO 400, 1/20sec @ f3.5 00:27 --> ISO 125, 1/100sec @ f3.5 00:37 --> accidently deleted original file expect exposure same as or similar to 00:46 00:46 --> ISO 50, 1/160sec @ f3.5 00:57 --> ISO 50, 1/200sec @ f3.5 01:07 --> ISO 50, 1/100sec @ f6.3
That exactly what I did bob, plus the 23:29 photo i extended the exposure to get more of the red to show although the resulting picture looks a little too red, i then returned to the 23:26 exposure for the next 3 shots for the sake on continuity and so you can see how much brighter the moon got.
the photos which do not fall on the seven minites were those when there were cars outside the house, i was very quick to get up from lying in the middle of the road whenever there was a car or dog walker in sight.
assuming your using digital don't be put off trying some lower light photography, where the most important thing besides exposure is to keep your camera steady, whether that be on a tripod or resting on a wall or something else.
the main cause of camera shake is usually though the camera being in contact with your hands and pressing the button with you fingers. there are ways to avoid this sometimes you may have a shutter release cable or wireless control for a digital camera so that you can take a picture without actually touching the camera. Also many digital cameras have a lag time (delay) between pressing the button and the camera taking the picture, so if your camera is steady you can press the button and remove your hands before the camera takes the picture.
Exposure the best thing to do is just experiment, for my photos of the lunar eclipse I set the exposure in manually. for photos of the moon when there is not an eclipse the exposure you need should remain pretty constant (except at moon rise and set).
Focusing, if it is possible to manual focos you camera, set it to infinity. i find that trying to focus on the moon with autofocus to be quite difficult, but it is possible.
Flash - your flash does not light the moon so turn it off
for landscape photos in low light, often this is best done just before sunrise or after sunset, when there is at least some light and colour in the sky. it may even be possible to get some reasonable photos on a bright moonlit night.
If you can set you camera to do long-ish exposure you could also try photograping lightening at night, by having the camera taking a picture and hoping you get some lightening in the right area while the shutter is open. Here is some lightening over Lake Tana in Ethiopia 15 second exposure.
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