how do you take moon shots? I've seen peoples pictures where you can clearly see the craters in the moon

anyways here is a picture i took today

its a 100% crop so i think the exif info is gone, anyways heres what i used

300mm, 1/60 sec, F/5.6, ISO-400, Manual Exposure Program



one question is, how do you meter the moon? cause when i would take pictures w/ the exposure level at 0, metering off the moon it would come out over exposed, ex.

yea i know there is glare, that was from the UV filter, i took it off after this shot

300mm, 1/30 sec, F/5.6, ISO-1600, Manual Exposure Program

and what i did in the 1st shot, the camera was telling me that the picture was going to turn out really underexposed (blinking at -2)

if you want to see the actual picture not crop then here is the 1st one


300mm, 1/60 sec, F/5.6, ISO-400, Manual Exposure Program


and for the hell of it was messing with my tables yesterday and took a picture of it

140 mm, 1/30 sec, F/8.0, ISO-1600, Manual Exposure Program
(yes i know the handle for the needle is broken off)

 

here's a picture from POTN (hopefully it's okay if i post it, not my picture), but he was using massive tele.
http://www.casciola.com/pics/moonSigmaStack_3481.jpg



original link:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=265979

 

There's a trick to exposing the moon properly...

...use a calculator: http://www.shaystephens.com/moon_calc.php




Actually, I use the calculator to get me in the ballpark, then I still bracket a few frames.

 

Not too surprisingly, the best way to get Moon pictures is through a telescope. What a lot of people don't realize, however, is that you don't have to go nuts doing it. The Moon is bright enough that you generally don't have to worry about tracking mounts and so forth. There are even products available that allow you to couple a digicam directly to a telescope eyepiece (link below). This type of thing is known as afocal imaging. You're just using a digicam to look through the telescope the same way that you would with your own eye.

If you want to use an SLR to shoot the moon with a telescope, then you more or less have to do it with the SLR at prime focus. This is where you use the telescope as the camera's lens. This kind of imaging can quickly become a major PIA, even when shooting the Moon.

http://www.scopetronix.com/dtsystems.htm

 

I've got a copy of DSLR Focus that is designed to assist focusing with telescope, but the only problem is it won't talk to a 30D. It's fine for a 20D or a Rebel, but the guy hasn't issued an update for anything newer. He is still taking people's money though... Me =

 

 

Or, should you not want to lug a laptop in the field just to focus your camera, then you can get a device like this.

http://www.stellar-international.com/digitalsf6.html

I have one and it worked very well in the three times I've actually used it.

 

holy... kinda hard to top that!

 

what the, how the hell am i supposed to figure that out w/o a calculator

 

any the only reason why I'm trying to figure this out now is cause i want to take pictures of the full moon come Chinese new year

 

Well if it's for Chinese New Year then I guess you're excused. Otherwise a full moon generally makes for boring pictures. It's the astrophotography equivalent of shooting outside during the day at noon.

 

really? i always loved the way a full moon looks, like how it looks bigger than normal and has that orangeish yellow glow to it

 

anyways im going to try this again tonight but using the calculator to get me started

 

k i tried again today, and wow that calculator works out really well, but what i want to know is how would you meter that w/o the calculator? im sure the calculator is made from someones metering off the moon, anyways...

100% crop

300mm, 1/125 sec, f/8, ISO-200, Manual Exposure Program
(i really dont know why pbase makes it off that i use program mode when i don't)

resized

300mm, 1/125 sec, f/8, ISO-200, Manual Exposure Program

BTW i absolutely LOOOOOVE IS, all my moon shots were taken hand held
i suppose they would've came out sharper w/ a tripod thou

 

you shouldve at least posted some chick moon us, not some dude :angryfire

 

what no comments? did i do that bad of a job?

 

I didn't comment because I'm completely spoiled by all the moon images I've seen that are taken through telescopes. For handheld with a camera lens, those are pretty good.

If you feel like some experimental image processing, go into the channels of your image and then turn off the red and blue so that you're only looking at the green channel. Select all, and then copy/paste into a new image file. Lastly, do a basic levels adjustment. It may sound complicated, but it takes less than five minutes and usually results in a notable improvement for most Moon images. The resulting file from this is technically a greyscale image, but the Moon has so little color to begin with, that hardly anyone will ever notice.

BTW, if you try tripod shots of the Moon, be sure to also use mirror lockup. The Moon has so much fine detail that even shutter speeds like 1/125 can sometimes benefit from MLU.

 

Few months ago, on the way back from a local mall, I saw the biggest moon ever..
almost looking like a UFO..
Thank god I had my camera with me.

First pic is with full auto setting i believe..
and second, third shot are on shutter speed priority.

 

damn now thats what im talking about, i love the way the full moon looks

 

Hope I had known the moon exposure calculater earlier

 

Taken back in 2002 using the afocal method I mentioned above with a Nikon 995 digicam. It also uses the green channel only processing technique.

 

^^Nice detail on that one.

 

cool shots, moon shots are definitely not a trivial shot because people think that they need a long exposure.

Here are some tips (from my scott kelby book):
full manual
f/11
1/250
zoom is tight as possible 200mm+
and a tripod

 

hmm... im thinking there isnt going to be a moon visable for chinese new year, the full moon was a few days ago and chinese new year is on the 18th

anyways its been really cloudy lately so i couldnt get the full moon, this is the next best i could do, i was driving to my friends place saw the moon and pulled to the side and took a few quick shots of it


1/125s f/8.0 at 300.0mm iso200 manual mode

 

The Moon will be up during the day on the 18th. For Riverside the rise/set times are 07:14/19:07 PST. The U.S. Naval Observatory has a little app that computes rise/set times for the Sun and Moon from most major places in the U.S. or anywhere in the world if you know the latitude and longitude.

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.html

 

sweet site, so pretty much id only be able to catch the moon during the day time or the first moments of night time, better start scouting out good areas to capture it


you would think that they would program in when daylight savings is and adjust for that