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Photography Question 

BetterPhoto Member 		 

Night Photography


I have taken a roll of pictures at full moon, clear sky. I used different settings hoping to capture 1 or 2 good pictures of the moon as first time doing it. I used 400 ISO film. I took some pics with auto setting and then I played with av preset to take diff. pics at diff. aperture setting, letting camera do the rest.

All shots were done on tripod without flash and I took some pics with tv mode. I took many pics anywhere from 1 to up to 30 sec. exposure. The camera was pointing right at the bright moon with some trees foreground or no trees.

None of my photos got exposed right; all the shots - even the automatic setting ones - had this huge flare (bigger then the moon) on it. Is it the reflection of the moon that caused this? Do I need special filters?

Auto. setting on camera calculated about 1/2 sec to even 3/4 sec. exposure. and I did one up to 30 sec exposure. Most of them were same result. Any help would be appreciated. I scanned my 35mm negatives from scanner and I managed to take some pics out of it but the bright dark overexposed blob... was in all the shots. Some shots had the moon right next to it. Which I was able to see. Help. I have Canon EOS Elan 7.


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January 15, 2001

 

Ken Pang 		 
 
  Moonrise
Moonrise
Moon rising over Manly Beach.

Ken Pang

  
 
A 300mm lens will put an image of the moon approximately the size of a 10 cent piece (15 - 20mm in diameter) on a 6x4 print. The common mistake most people fall into is that they let the computer do the metering. Since a night sky is basically pitch black, the meter exposes until the scene has an average light of 18% grey.

This means that the moon will be one horrificly bright blur with absolutely no detail in it at all. What you should do is spot meter off the moon to get a sharp photo of it. If you're serious about astrophotography, get a telescope that has a lens mount. Otherwise, the photos you get will be purely creative, not detailed.

Do you like this photo though? It was taken using an EOS 5 (A2E) 70-300 IS, USM f/4-5.6, set at 5.6, 8 seconds on Fuji NPH 400. It's actually 10pm at night on Manly beach facing Shelly beach (In Australia). It was so over exposed that the stars started becoming visible - my photofinisher printed it 5 times before he realised that it wasn't actually dust on the print :)


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January 16, 2001

 
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