Moon Shot for your consideration

Hi Everybody-

We have a clear night and a full moon over Columbus Ohio tonight and I just had to go out and shoot it. I used a 70-300 racked out to 300 on my D200. I further cropped it in Lightroom 3 and did some minor adjustments. Let me know your thoughts. Thank you for taking the time to look and respond !!

I like the darkness of it, looks mysterious

Pretty good shot, Doug. Nice detail and it doesn't appear to be overexposed. I like the mysterious look . . . have you tried to up the exposure a tad in lightroom to see if the photo will pop a little more, or is that going to give you blown out areas? Or is the dark look what you were going for?

Nicely done, Doug. If it wasn't -22C tonight, I'd be out there, taking a shot of the moon, too!

Not very clear....couldn't focus much 'cause my fingers were freezing

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Looks pretty clear to me, Jack! I think the exposure is perfect. Nice shot and good for you for tuffin' it out!

OK, I tuffed it out and went outside to take my first moonshot. Not very clear, but I couldn't focus right because my fingers were frozen! lol Here it is anyway. Shot at ISO 200 f11 1/320th. 300mm
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ohkphoto said:

Looks pretty clear to me, Jack! I think the exposure is perfect. Nice shot and good for you for tuffin' it out!

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Thank you, Helene. I try! lol Hopefully I can get a better shot when (and if) it ever warms up again!

Hi Jack-- You're such a trooper !!!! Good for you, Not too bad. I can tell you that I think I shot mine at F8 and 1/1000 of a sec so I could get nice darks and lights. It's a pretty bright moon out tonight, so it's good to up the speed to control those highlights. Good shot,,,,now go warm up and thaw out your equipment. (LOL) !!!

Hi Helene-

Thanks for the comments. I was going for a darker exposure to keep the detail visible. The moon was so large and bright tonight that I had to shoot at 1/1000 to keep the brights from blowing out. I think the rest was at F8 and ISO of 200. I tried to up the exposure and as I did,,, the lights would get blown out and I started to lose detail.

Thanks again !!!!

Doug

I forgot to mention.....I shot this using the bulb mode, not 1/320th of a sec as I posted. (my bad) I counted to 3 using a remote shutter actuator.
And the temperature is -23C (-9.4F) at the moment.

I was going for a darker exposure to keep the detail visible

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You did good, Doug! The moon is tough to photograph. I think we forget how bright it really is until we start photographing it.
So you have good detail and a keeper.

Another suggestion for shooting the moon. On very clear nights the f/stop range of the moon, from dark shadow areas to the very bright areas can exceed the capabilities of a DSLR, which is about six stops. Add to that a lot of glair and it makes it very difficult to get a good shot. Shooting the moon under these conditions means under exposing to get details and you wind up with a shot that is on the flat side without pop. A suggested method to eliminate the glair and help reduce the f/stop range is to use a one stop neutral density filter or a CPL filter. A CPL is any where from 1.3 to a 1.5 ND. (A CPL does not work as a CPL when shooting directly into a light source, but does give you a 1.3 to 1.5 ND when needed.) This technique should bring down the glair and the excessive f/stop range of a very bright moon. This is not the cure all for moon shots but should give you an exposure that is workable in post processing. If desired, you can also add a little color by setting the WB on shade. This will add warm color to the shot.