Taking Pics of The Moon


NiteRunner

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I don't have a tripod, but I typically find a good steady rest in a tree or some other near by thing. Mainly just the Full Moon pics that don't turn out.

I tried searching before I posted this, as I thought I remembered a thread about it, but I couldn't find it. I'll give it another go though.

Rut, NICE Pics!!

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Like anything else in photography it comes down to experimenting with the camera and all its settings. The distance is great when it comes to moon shots. Very easy to get blur with an unstable camera. The moon being a reflection of direct sunlight is very bright and may be fooling the camera's auto focus. You might want to try using manual focus with the aperture set at f8. Hope this helps.

Here is a shot of the same moon in my earlier post.

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You definitely need a tri-pod, due to the shutter speeds being so low. Use the highest "F" stop your camera has. Then bracket your exposures until you find the one you like the best. Most people use a too slow of a shutter speed because the surrounding area of the moon is black. This fools the camera into using a slower shutter speed. Switch to manual, and bracket away! If your camera has a spot metering capability you can try using this.

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The light hitting th moon is about the same as the light hitting the earth during the daylite. I'd start my exposures using the inverse of the ISO ie: ISO is 200, set shutter at 1/250th. ISO 400? Set shutter to 1/500th, etc. The normal rules of exposure would call for an f-stop of about 11, I believe. I would imagine that a lot of the blur you are seeing is from the moon moving, not so much the camera. Start there and adjust as you go. Remeber that digital images have a wider latitude of exposure on the shadow side, so don't be too concerned if the images are a LITTLE dark.

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Awesome Pics Shawn!! I never thought about using a towel to help steady the camera. I'm going to have to remember that.

Bill, Thanks for the advice!! I'm going to mess with my camera's settings and see if I can't get this figured out. The moon is in its last quarter, so I'll have to do it one night soon.

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