See You On the Dark Side – Again – Foto Friday

My daughter Kaedee and I love looking at the night sky.  We’ve craned our neck until they were stiff looking for meteors, froze looking at constellations and watched a full lunar eclipse once.  Our favorite though is taking pictures of the moon. It’s easy, doesn’t require really special equipment, happens a lot, and the results are great if you know a few tips. (And no, I did not take this picture – courtesy of a Creative Commons license from Flickr)

Look familiar?  Maybe this is how your moon pictures turn out?  There’s a simple explanation.  Always remember Cameras are dumb; they guess at the right exposure.  And most of the time they get it right.  But with pictures of the moon you have a lot of black / dark (the sky) and only a tiny bit of the sun-lit moon.  So the camera sees all that dark and says “I have to give more exposure because this is so dark”.  So the camera opens the f/stop to let in more light, ups the ISO speed, or slows down the shutter speed.  And the moon gets overexposed – pushed to a white blob of nothingness.

What you have to do is force the camera to give less exposure.  Remember the moon is lit by the sun – full on, bright and powerful because there is no atmosphere to cut the light.  So the correct exposure is quite like taking a picture on a sunny day on earth.  The easy to remember rule of thumb is the “Loony 11” rule – f/stop at f/11, shutter speed of 1/your ISO speed.  So if I had the camera set at ISO 100, the correct exposure for a full moon is 1/100 of a second at f/11. Now less moon – less light.  So a half moon would be 1/100 sec at f/8 and a quarter moon is down yet a another to 1/100 at f/5.6.  And remember these are starting points – look at the picture on your view screen on your camera and make adjustments from there. 

Other limitations – the moon is tiny; taking up about 1/2 degree of view in  the sky.  So to get really big pictures of the moon you have to have a really long (high #) focal length lens or a really big zoom range.  And remember it can’t be digital zoom (see our blog post on digital zoom here) or the quality will drop off fast – like this picture.  Unless you have a a really nice point and shoot, you probably need a DSLR with a big zoom lens. 

A few last tips:

• A tripod or sturdy camera support is essential – the zoom is so big and the focus so tiny that any movement will result in a blurry picture.
• Consider using the self timer feature to make sure the camera is still – just your finger pushing the shutter gently vibrates the camera so the self timer allows you to push the shutter and then let the vibration deaden before taking the picture.
• Remember a small flashlight – although the moon is bright it’s still tough to see those settings on your camera!

So leave me a comment and let me know if you’ve taken any great moon or astrological pictures – was this information useful?  Let me know!

Other posts you will enjoy:

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