Shooting the Moon
Shooting the moon is tempting, but not very easy. This article describes the difficulties in photographing the moon and how to work around them to take good pictures.
The first problem has to do with exposure. If you are aiming for the moon and let the camera handle exposure automatically, you will in most cases get a hefty overexposure of the moon with black space around. This is because the camera does not have the dynamics necessary for both to be exposed properly and it's pretty much black around the moon as it becomes overweight in the direction of the camera's light meter and it will then try to expose for the darker background instead of the moon.
Using spot metering of the light it may be easier but it is usually easiest to use the camera in full manual mode. For those of you who have not photographed in manual mode, this is a golden opportunity to start with it and it is not difficult.
First, it is time to choose optics. In order to have an impressive moon, you need at least 200 mm focal length. To really get close, almost 600 mm is needed for a digital camera sensor in DX format. By cropping the image after you let the moon fill out the picture but then you also lose resolution or sharpness, the longer the focal length you can achieve the better it gets.
Set the camera in "M" (manual) mode, and start by adjusting the aperture to the lowest rate as possible. In many less expensive zoom lenses, it means aperture around f/5.6, if you have a more bright optics, you get aperture around f/3,5-2,8, it is rarely there are brighter optics than that. However, the optics have the best sharpness between f/8 to f/11 so if you can use a tripod, try to be in the aperture area.
Tripods can be tempting, if you do not have tripod but a vibration reducing lens (or camera) it works actually quite good to work handheld if you have good support for yourself.
If using a tripod, turn off the Vibration Reduction. Otherwise, the camera can be fooled and start to "jump" and make the picture fuzzier!
Set the shutter speed to about 1/15s, reach for the moon, let the camera focus and press gently into the shutter release until the picture is taken. Check out the picture, is it over or underexposed?
At the right exposure, the moon will appear slightly off-white print, but it is possible to notice the darker portions, craters, ring mountains and shadows. An overexposed moon lose detail and become white with blown highlights. An underexposed moon becomes dark gray. You can post process the image, but it usually gets pretty noisy. It will be nicer if you get it right straight away.
If the image is overexposed, you can change the shutter speed to 1/30s instead. If it is underexposed, you extend the shutter speed, perhaps 1/10s and try again. Repeat until you see that you get a good exposure. Zoom in on the image to check sharpness, if it looks blurred out, try to work with support for the camera and yourself, control your breathing and press the shutter button gently. It can also be smart to set the shutter release automatic, let's say a 10 second delay.
Tripods do the job, but not with too slow shutter speeds, because the moon moves but not the tripod, it will be motion blur at shutter speeds from a few seconds and up. For shutter speeds mentioned above, tripods are excellent.
Please use the burst modes and take 3-5 pictures, check out the results, remove the blurry pictures and run a series again. Repeat this sequence several times. That way you can get a good picture even if you have difficulty in getting the right sharpness in the beginning.
In retrospect, you'll probably get to crop the image a bit to get the moon properly presented.
A tip if you take landscape photos with the moon is to shoot the moon separate and expose it correctly, then photograph the landscape. The reason for this is that a beautiful, low-hanging moon looks much less impressive on the photo, where the moon is exactly the same size as when it is higher in the sky. By shooting it separately, you can enlarge it and make a photomontage. To enlarge the moon in this way is very common and gives a lot more feeling in the picture. A magnification of about 4 x is appropriate for this.
Camera settings (Nikon D200)
Automatic mode: Manual
Focus type: Automatic full 51-point
Auto Focus: AF-S (Single Focus)
Aperture: f/8 (tripod) or maximum aperture by handheld
Light metering: (Does not matter in manual mode)
Burst mode: Continuous-Low <5 fps
White Balance: Auto
ISO: 200-400
Image Format: RAW/JPEG FINE
