Dumb Question

humbert

Last night I was trying to take some pictures of the full moon but I kept getting a kind of fringing around it.

A little like below but much bigger even when the moon did not look as bright. Decreasing exposure helped but I'm wondering if there is anything I'm missing. Do I need some sort of filter? I would like to catch some land in the same picture. I tried adjusting aperture and iso but it made little difference. I'm using a Canon 500D with the standard 18-55 kit lens if that helps.



Help appreciated!

PS the moon off Sandymount looked awesome last night between 7 and 8, if it's clear again tonight its well worth a look.

PCPhoto

are you sure thats the moon ? and not the sun ?

EDIT: Use a tripod and long exposure

humbert

Thanks for the suggestion.

I was using a tripod but the longest exposure was about 8 seconds. I didn't notice a big improvement with longer exposures but I'll try it again. That may be the sun. I don't have my photos with me at the moment so just googled for something similar.

I'm looking to get a nice crisp outline on a dark sky and that is what utterly eluded me.

PopeBuckfastXVI

Shoot the moon at about iso100: f/8 : 1/250s

Should come out well exposed then. It's *way* brighter than anything else at night. If you shoot much less than the above exposure you'll end up with it completely blown.

Unfortunately it doesn't leave you much scope to bring in landscape, unless the landscape too is well lit, e.g. a city at night.

Riamfada

Yeah get a tripod, set the ISO to minimum and try and exposure lasting a few minutes.

humbert

Thanks, my shutter speeds were way way higher than that especially when I was using a low iso.

How to people get those moon lit landscape photos...lots of photoshopping?

melekalikimaka

Grimes wrote: »

Yeah get a tripod, set the ISO to minimum and try and exposure lasting a few minutes.

will be very soft then due to moon movement. ya want a high ap like f8 or more and a shutter 1 sec or less imo. toy with the settings til ya get what ya want, filter will help but tbh its not like you ever need a nd at night unless you doing star trails

hcnyla

humbert wrote: »

How to people get those moon lit landscape photos...lots of photoshopping?

Take two shots. One for the moon and another for the landscape and blend the two afterwards.

oshead

As popebucketfast eluded to, the contrast between the moon and the rest of the scene is way too much. More than the image sensor on the camera can handle. You have a few ways around this problem, all with varying degrees of effectiveness. The first option is to use a neutral density graduated filter. This will bring the moon back for you but you may loose the rest of the sky. So not ideal. Else you could try HDR. This is shooting multiple exposures over lets say a 5 stop range. The first to expose the darkest areas moving up shot by shot till you expose the brightest with the 5th. You'd then combine them in a program like photomatix. Another way would be to try and expose the sky, moon and landscape in three separate shots and pop'em into photoshop for a little bit of compositing.

Why not try techniques from all three methods together. This may yield you best results.

humbert

Thanks, starting to get a handle on it.

Wrt aperture. I don't really know what the difference between say f/5.6 and f/11 is. Sure there will be less light getting in at f/11 and so shutter speed will be sacrificed but are there any other considerations?

I haven't noticed any consequence to the depth of field, certainly between f/8 and up. Does less light mean more noise and are there other negatives?

Oh and on the HDR is it standard practise to change the aperture between shots instead of the shutter speed...and if so why?


Thanks a lot btw...I've found it a little difficult to get answers to specific questions like this. Last night was frustrating because I didn't know how to approach the problem at all, at least now I have some things to try.

CabanSail

When Bracketing it's best practice to keep the Aperture constant & vary the shutter speed. If you are shooting RAW you have a couple of stops either side already, so you can Bracket at -4 -2 0 +2 +4 to get a good selection. Add in ±6 if the Dynamic Range is large.

The DOF will increase as Aperture decreases. The sweet spot in many lenses is around f5.6 - f8 below that you can get softness in the corners.

oshead

humbert wrote: »

Wrt aperture. I don't really know what the difference between say f/5.6 and f/11 is. Sure there will be less light getting in at f/11 and so shutter speed will be sacrificed but are there any other considerations? I haven't noticed any consequence to the depth of field, certainly between f/8 and up. Does less light mean more noise and are there other negatives?

I think you answered your own question here regarding DoF from f/8 and up.

The noise question is a little more difficult to answer. Certainly, noise is more noticeable in the darker tones of an image. What I think you mean is signal to noise ratio (SRN). Noise amounts are equal from dark to bright tones. It's the signal strength (light) that changes. You'd expect to have less perceived noise in the brighter tones, high Signal to noise ratio and more perceived noise in the darker tones because of low signal to noise ratio. So in effect, the noise remains the same but the signal strength is what's important.

humbert wrote: »

Oh and on the HDR is it standard practise to change the aperture between shots instead of the shutter speed...and if so why?

I havn't done much HDR, but for what it's worth, all settings stay the same except shutter speed. So, step up each stop by doubling the amount of time the shutter is left open.

Dara Robinson

Its more than likely happening cause you have such a long exposure. Remember the moon is reflecting light from the sun.
If you look at your picture you can see detail on the lake (or body of water) and that should not be if the Moon is exposed properly

Have you got aperture lock on your camera? Should say something like AE-L/AF-L or something like that.

If you then have your camera on aperture priority and centre on the moon and then lock it. You will then know what shutter speed you need at that ap. You can then simply take the shot or turn it manual and take the shot.
The sky should come out but the ground will not at all. So if you want the Moon, sky and ground in you will need to take a photo of each and HDR it.

humbert

That's what I was curious about, the "sweet spot" for the lens and if noise (or signal to noise ratio) was an issue.

I think I know what I need to try next time. Stupid clouds tonight unfortunately.

I did try metering from a spot centred on the moon but I was still a little over exposed.

Mr. Grieves

One other thing worth noting about the shot you posted is that 95% of the scene is very dark while only 5% (the moon) is bright. So the exposure your camera calculated by taking some sort of average of the scene will favour the dark areas, leaving the moon overexposed (esp if you use centre-wighted metering as your moon is off-centre).

The dynamic range here, as has been mentioned, is huge. HDR is really your only option. I would suggest taking 10 exposures over a 10 stop range and combining the 2 or 3 which give best exposure of moon/landscape, respectively. I'm suggesting this because chances are your "middle" exposure value will be way off due to the difficulty in metering I mentioned.

Heebie

Generally Photoshopping, or some other method of arriving at HDR photos.

Someone posted a great tutorial for HDR using his favorite tools in another thread.

humbert wrote: »

Thanks, my shutter speeds were way way higher than that especially when I was using a low iso.

How to people get those moon lit landscape photos...lots of photoshopping?