October 28, 2004

How to Shoot the Moon

Some people were curious about how I took the photos of the moon during the eclipse. This post explains how.

I got the photos of the moon (more will be in the gallery this weekend!) by turning my camera to full manual and then cranking way down on the shutter speed and closing down the aperture (i.e., increasing the aperture up to f/8), and using a low ISO speed.

At "normal" settings, where the camera decides proper brightness, it wanted the exposure time to be up in the range of 5 or more seconds, an open aperture (i.e., down to ~f/4), and high ISO (200 or 400). This let me see the clouds around the moon, and some stars, but the moon was a white blob, and the exposure was long enough that the clouds were blurry due to their motion (note that all photos were taken with the camera mounted on a tripod, even if it was a flimsy plastic one).

For the full, non-eclipsed moon, I instead set the exposure time very short, in the range of 1/200 to 1/400 of a second, and the aperture was closed up at f/8, and an ISO of 80 or 100. In other words, exposure went down by a factor of 1,000 or more (maybe 4,000? - i.e., a full 10 to 12 f-stops)! This is necessary because the moon is reflecting sunlight. Your camera is tricked into thinking it needs high exposure because most of the field of view is black. But in order to capture details of the very bright moon, you really need a low exposure. With these new settings, the moon came out beautifully but the clouds were invisible (because they were too dim)!

For the eclipsed moon, I had to increase the exposure time, up into the range of 1/10 to 1/30 of a second, and I also opened the aperture down to ~f/6, because it was so much dimmer than the non-eclipsed moon.

Posted by Tom Nugent at October 28, 2004 07:35 PM
Comments

Great explaination. Thanks. We'll have to try it again. :)

Posted by: lori at October 29, 2004 10:38 AM
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