MANUAL MODE. To get a great Moon
shot and little else, set your camera to ISO 100 or ISO 200 and the
aperture to between f/5.6 and f/11, and adjust your shutter speed to
between 1/125sec and 1/250sec. The exact settings will vary depending on
your camera and the brightness of the Moon, which depends on its exact
phase, but these base settings will get you started.
The Moon is a moving target; the combination of Moon's 2,288
miles-per-hour orbit and Earth's 1,000 miles-per-hour rotation makes our
satellite a fast-moving target. However, it's usually bright enough for
a relatively fast shutter speed to yield good results.
How to focus on the Moon
Although
you can autofocus on the Moon as it rises, or as it becomes visible
just before sunset, it's a good idea to focus manually. With your lens
set to manual focus, set the the focusing ring to infinity. It takes
some practice since most cameras can focus beyond infinity, and finding
the exact point that works for your lens takes trial and error.
Take
some test shots and zoom in on the result on your camera's LCD screen
to see which one works best. Don't skip this step; only once you've done
it correctly will your Moon photos be reliably sharp.
How to expose for the Moon
It's
a common mistake to overexpose the moon but it's actually much brighter
than you think. However, if you want to photograph the foreground and
not just the moon by itself you will need to make sure your exposure
works for both or use bracketing to take multiple shots with different
exposures.
To get a great Moon
shot and little else, set your camera to ISO 100 or ISO 200 and the
aperture to between f/5.6 and f/11, and adjust your shutter speed to
between 1/125sec and 1/250sec. The exact settings will vary depending on
your camera and the brightness of the Moon, which depends on its exact
phase, but these base settings will get you started.
Taking
a landscape photograph that includes the Moon is more difficult because
during that 'blue hour' after sunset the Moon is already too bright.
So, if you take a longer exposure for the landscape, you'll overexpose
the Moon, and if you expose for the Moon, the landscape with be
under-exposed. So what do you do?
The
answer is either to photograph the Moon just before sunset when the
light levels are higher (they drop-off so quickly at the point of
sunset), or to take two exposures and combine them in photo-editing
software. The latter approach, however, often looks fake. Another way is
to expose for the Moon, and use a flash to light the foreground.
When to photograph the Moon
The
full moon is probably the lunar event that most photographers will want
to photograph first - but it is actually one of the most difficult due
to the glare that this creates and July's supermoon is the biggest and
brightest of them all. Some of the most impressive shots of the full
moon are those where it is seen behind a building or a natural structure
– which makes the moon look much larger than it does to the naked eye.
If
you want less of a cliche, go for other phases of the Moon when you can
see a line between the light and dark sides. This is called the
terminator line, which is when the craters on the Moon throw shadows,
particularly near its South Pole. You can see this most nights, but
perhaps the most precious kind of Moon is visible only on the few days
on either side of New Moon. At this time, you'll also see a waxing or
waning Crescent Moon close to the horizon, and it comes with the bonus
of Earthshine.
How to capture Earthshine on the Moon
Although 50% of the Moon is
constantly being illuminated by the Sun, there are a few days each month
when the Earth gets involved – and it's a beautiful event to capture.
Earthshine
is a dull glow to the unlit area of the Moon that's the result of
sunlight reflecting off Earth's surface and onto the lunar surface. Its
subtle and mesmerizing, and easy to capture if you time it right.
Set
up for the first (or, more likely, the second) sunset after New Moon.
Using a lens with as long a focal length lens as possible, and with your
camera on a tripod, dial in a sensitivity of ISO 400, an aperture of
f/2.8 (or as wide as your lens aperture will go), and open the shutter
for between one and four seconds.
In fact, Earthshine is always
being reflected onto the Moon to some extent, but it's only around New
Moon that the crescent of sunlight is small enough for the camera to
expose for both the lit and unlit areas.
This
is also a good time to combine Moon photography with night-sky
photography because the Moon will set soon after you've photographed it.
You can then go looking for stars and the Milky Way.
How to capture a moonrise or moonset
There are two exceptions to the advice to avoid photographing the Full Moon.
The first is when there's a total lunar eclipse,
and the second is when a Full Moon as it rises or sets, as it's a great
alternative to a sunset. The sight of a Full Moon peeking above the
horizon and turning from deep orange to pale yellow to bright white
during twilight is a spectacular sight. It also presents an opportunity
to get the Moon in the context of a beautiful landscape.
The
colourful spectacle lasts mere minutes and is easy to miss, but, like
everything else in the night sky, a rising Full Moon is predictable down
to the second. Simply find out exactly on what day the next Full Moon
is going to be where you are, and exactly what time sunset is on that
date, then look to the east for the moonrise. Start-off with your camera
set to ISO 100, f10 and 1/125.
If you've ever seen photos of
someone or something silhouetted against a seemingly giant Moon, perhaps
while standing on top of a hill, they were taken during a moonrise.
They were also ruthlessly planned; The Photographer's Ephemerisand PhotoPills apps are ideal for this kind of project.
To
make the Moon look so large in the background, photographers need to
use superzoom telephoto lenses of at least 1,000mm while being
positioned a mile or so away from the all-important foreground subject
that introduces that sense of scale.
Composites, moon-stacks and super moons
It's possible to shoot the Moon and add it to another landscape shot using Photoshop.
However, almost everyone who attempts this either makes the Moon look
way too big, or they place it somewhere in the night sky that it doesn't
occur (such as in the norther hemisphere's northern sky).
To anyone with a trained eye, most composites look like what they are: fakes. There is one exception; moonstacks,
a lunar time-lapse, in which you take several photos of the moon as it
moves through the sky, and then use Photoshop to composite them into a
single image.
Although
it often grabs the attention of photographers and media alike, pay
little attention to the term 'Super Moon'. A recent term that merely
means that the Moon is slightly closer to Earth than normal, it has
little practical meaning or use. However, while a Super Full Moon does
look larger as it rises above the horizon, it's only by about 10%-15%,
so it's barely noticeable to eye or camera.
The very finest way of getting a
close-up shot of the Moon – and the only way to get enough magnification
for it to fill the entire frame – is to mount the body of a camera on a
telescope using a cheap T-adaptor; it's like having a very large
telephoto lens. Try to find a telescope with a focal length of over
1,000mm, but under 2,000mm to capture the whole of the moon.
Whatever
kind of Moon-shot you try for, photographing our satellite provides a
good lesson in the role of precision timing in composing unique
landscape and nature images.
Although 50% of the Moon is
constantly being illuminated by the Sun, there are a few days each month
when the Earth gets involved – and it's a beautiful event to capture.
Earthshine
is a dull glow to the unlit area of the Moon that's the result of
sunlight reflecting off Earth's surface and onto the lunar surface. Its
subtle and mesmerizing, and easy to capture if you time it right.
Set
up for the first (or, more likely, the second) sunset after New Moon.
Using a lens with as long a focal length lens as possible, and with your
camera on a tripod, dial in a sensitivity of ISO 400, an aperture of
f/2.8 (or as wide as your lens aperture will go), and open the shutter
for between one and four seconds.
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