Moon pictures

Wakefieldowl

Senior Member
Hi everyone,
I hope someone can give me some advice.
I tried capturing the moon a couple of nights ago, which was straightforward enough. However, what looked so amazing was the thin layer of cloud high up that created a double halo around the moon. I tried and tried with different settings but could not get it right. I either got a perfect moon, with no clouds, or on a longer exposure, I got the clouds but the moon became a bright white ball, with no features. I wanted to try and capture what I saw with my eyes, but failed miserbaly lol
Any advice ?
If it helps I used and D7200 and a 35mm lens and also an 18-55mm lens, zoomed in. Is the lens my problem ?

Thanks as always for any replies
 

Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Is the lens my problem ?

Thanks as always for any replies

No the lens is not the problem, the moon is too bright. It is the classic situation the camera is unable to record the extremes of the scene, the dynamic range is too great. You may try shooting in HDR mode or use a photo stacking program. As I don't regularly shoot moon shot others will have better advice.
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
You cannot capture a perfectly exposed Moon and foreground in a single image. To properly expose for the Moon, means you will always get a black background/foregound. Images that you see of a perfectly exposed moon, and a lit foreground are composite images. You can always tell, because they usually make the moon disproportionately larger than it really was...

Shoot the perfectly exposed moon framing the position...Then shoot the perfectly exposed sky, again framing the scene then merge the two images in post processing to create the single image.
 
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BF Hammer

Senior Member
I have gone through a comparable issue photographing Jupiter through a 600mm lens. You can expose Jupiter to show the bands in the atmosphere, or blow out the exposure so you can see the moons around Jupiter. I make both exposures and overlay the properly exposed Jupiter on the photo showing the moons.
 

BF Hammer

Senior Member
So show us one of the Jupiter detail shots with the moons around it! :cool:

Please remember I used a camera lens and not a Dobsonian telescope. To bring out the detail I took about 40 images and layer-stacked with Registax (the best free Windows solution for stacking planetary images). Did the same with the over-exposed sequence so I could have the high virtual resolution to match. Then snip-snip, paste-paste.

RXEUdqb.jpg

And Saturn from the same night. This is all greatly aided by using a go-to equitorial mount so I could keep the planets in the frame the entire time.

skfUjUx.jpg
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Just remember the moon is bright and does not need a long exposure, and for what you are chasing you would have had to focus stack the images to get the clouds and moon exposed correctly.

Hi everyone,
I hope someone can give me some advice.
I tried capturing the moon a couple of nights ago, which was straightforward enough. However, what looked so amazing was the thin layer of cloud high up that created a double halo around the moon. I tried and tried with different settings but could not get it right. I either got a perfect moon, with no clouds, or on a longer exposure, I got the clouds but the moon became a bright white ball, with no features. I wanted to try and capture what I saw with my eyes, but failed miserbaly lol
Any advice ?
If it helps I used and D7200 and a 35mm lens and also an 18-55mm lens, zoomed in. Is the lens my problem ?

Thanks as always for any replies
 

BF Hammer

Senior Member
Apologies to Wakefieldowl, it was not my intention to take over this thread.

When I made the images last year, I also confirmed the moons in Stellarium and made alternate images with labels. That is a star in the upper right.

0n8mGXP.jpg

CmIACy5.png

6JTVCEx.jpg

UbRJEQe.png
 
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BF Hammer

Senior Member
Getting back to the original topic here: I had a similar photo-op with the moon tonight. A thin overcast was creating a sort of moon-dog. Except there was depth and texture with the cloud cover.

I used my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens to capture the image. I took over 70 photos, split into 3 groups with 3 different shutter speeds. I picked 1 image from each group, aligned the moon in each layer. The bottom 2 layers had very over-exposed moon, but the halo was showing well. Middle was a smaller halo, bottom layer had larger halo due to longer exposure. Top layer I processed to bring out some surface detail of moon, ignoring the halo. I layer-masked that top layer so only the moon would show in the stack. I experimented with the blend mode in layer 2 to get a pleasing result interacting with the base layer. Just flattened and 1 last sharpen filter applied before a resize and adding my watermark. Pre-processing with RawTherapee, final stacking and processing with GIMP.

Moon-dog.jpg

So now you get to see a method I would try. Maybe I could have just used the 3 images for a standard HDR edit. Still could try.
 
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