Tips on settings for Night Moon shot

Leaving for in-laws lake house tonight for Memorial Day weekend. Hoping to practice some more night shots. I took some last time I was there but it was the first time and didn't come out as well as I'd hoped.

Can any of you give me some settings you like to use when shooting at night, especially shots of the moon.

I use a Nikond7000 and will probably use my 35mm 1.8 lens.

Thanks

Here is pic of last time I took some at the lake

Pictures of just the moon are very a different situation than night scene pictures including the moon. Experimenation with exposure will always give the best result.

Night scenes vary greatly, situation not defined, use experimentation. Conceiveably, you might be guided by your cameras light meter (as a starting point).

But for telephoto pictures of the moon itself, remember that is a "daylight" situation. The moon is illuminated by the sun, the same as the earth is. So.. that means daylight exposures are expected. Otherwise, you will greatly overexpose the moon, and burn away all surface detail. The actual moon is sort of dark, a bit like lava rock.

You cannot use the camera light meter for "moon only" shots, because it sees all that black sky, and it will greatly overexpose the moon. You certainly cannot use the "Auto" mode, because it will pop open the little internal flash. You want to use manual exposure mode. Starting around Sunny 16 (f/16 at shutter speed equal to 1/ISO value). You don't need and don't want f/16 for the moon at night however. Depth of field is not an issue. So maybe f/5.6 at shutter speed three stops faster than ISO number. But anytime, if you are not seeing good detail in the moon surface, reduce your exposure.

However, there are still differences. The Full moon is frontally and flatly lighted, and very bright. The Quarter moon is side lighted, and the crescent moon is almost lighted from the rear. So exposures will vary for these situations.

Here is a fair exposure chart for the moon:
Moon Photography - A How To Guide

Also see Google for lots of tips: moon photography - Google Search

The things I've learned that are important for moon shots are to set your camera on spot meter instead of matrix metering, spot metering will give you a very good estimate on shutter speed. Another thing is to underexpose the shots a little. Each camera and lens combo are a little different to try a couple different underexposures until you figure out which works best.

And finally, I've found that setting your f-stop to something just barely above wide open, maybe a half of a stop gives the best detail. I used to shoot it at the lenses widest possible aperture but the sweet spot for a lenses is 1 to 2.5 stops smaller than maximum. So if max aperture is 2.8, use 3.2 or if it's 5.6 (like my 70-300mm), use 6.2. Don't go above f-11 because you'll begin to introduce diffraction and will lose sharpness compared to the sweet spot apertures.

Good luck!