How to photograph the moon

in #photography5 years ago


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Photographing the moon can be a tricky thing. There are many things that will stand in your way of getting a nice clear shot of the moon. The best method of course is to get in your spaceship and leave earth’s atmosphere, and then take the shot. But for those of us who do not have that luxury we have to deal with a few things.
There are a few issues to deal with:

  1. Correct exposure
  2. Weather
  3. The movement of the moon
  4. atmospheric distortion

You’ll notice I did not include focus in the above list, but that’s what atmospheric distortion covers and we’ll get to that. For the most part you have no control over these ‘issues’ except the correct exposure but you can minimize their effects. So lets go through the list one by one. Baby steps.

1. Correct exposure.

If you are trying to get a shot at night when the sun has already done down you are going to face some major problems with this. If you have ever tried you will notice. If you are shooting a landscape at night you will see that the moon appears as a ball of bright light in the sky. All the detail is completely blown out. You’ll also notice that the moon looks pretty far away too. You can zoom in with a telephoto lens but you’ll still get some blur/lens flaring/distortion.

You can underexpose to get the detail of the moon but you will lose everything else. Its a real pain in the ass. Ideally what you want to do is shoot the moon before twilight, during moonrise. This is the time between sunset and twilight where the moon comes up over the horizon while its still very much daylight. The moon also sits lower in the sky and appears larger. All helpful for getting in a little closer (especially if you’re not using a telescope).


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A real pain in the ass.

2. Weather

This one varies a great deal depending on where you live. Here in Scotland you may find its raining a lot, or more importantly, the sky is completely obscured by cloud. Planning is required, but easily done. There are so many weather apps and websites out there that this is merely a formality, and any photographer worth his/her salt will know what the weather is doing before they go on a shoot. Or at least have a vague idea of what the weather is doing, she can be a fickle and unpredictable lady..

3. The movement of the moon

You need to get the balance of exposure time, iso and aperture size just right as you cannot do long exposures with the moon. Like any planetary body, she moves and she moves fast. Just like with photographing starfields you can only expose for so long before you get motion blur. With the stars you can apply the 600 Rule but that won’t work here. Why? The moon is bigger, and closer and moves faster. Where you might get away with an 8 – 15 sec exposure for stars, the moon will look like a blur of light.

The solution to this; shoot during moonrise, you can use much faster shutter speeds at low iso settings for reduced noise and a good exposure without getting any motion blur. There’s a handy program that you can use called The Photographers Epheremis that gives you the times for moonrise, moonset, sunrise and sunset, and where you will see them throughout the year. It is extremely useful.


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4. Atmospheric Distortion

This affects how sharp and image of the moon you can get. Unfortunately there is about 100km of atmosphere between you and space (according to NASA), and that is a lot of particles and energy floating around. The two most annoying energies that happen to get in the way are humidity and heat. Have you ever driven down a road on a hot summers day and seen the objects in the distance become blurry and distorted? Its called heat haze (do a google image search for examples), and given the distance of the moon to the earth, you don’t need a lot of it to prevent you from getting a sharp image.

One technique that is favoured by many is image stacking or taking HD video from you camera taking in 24 – 30 frames per second, then letting a piece of software pull out the sharpest frames and blending them to give you the best possible results. This is fine, if you want to go hunting for software and then learning to use it. What I tend to do is lock up my mirror in camera by going into live view mode (this reduces camera shake) and take several shots until I have a sharp image I like. Not as reliable as image stacking but I don’t want to use the software. Its a personal choice.

Time of year is important to. You can vastly reduce the amount of distortion by trying this in the colder months. Starting from October onwards. Why? Because the earth gets warmed up all day during the day and in the early evening as the ambient temperature cools, all that heat slowly releases from the surface like a radiator does and you can still get that heat rise creating distortion for your image. In the colder months there’s less heat coming out of the ground as the days have been colder.

Getting geared up

So with the potential problems addressed, you can plan your shoot. You don’t need a lot of equipment to do this but you do need some, here’s the list of what I consider the essentials:

  • Camera (duh) - something that can change lenses
  • Telephoto lens (I use a 300mm. More or less is ok, but i recommend this as a minimum)
  • Remote shutter release
  • Tripod

That’s it. That’s all you need. Of course if you want huge high res images of the moon, then invest in a telephoto with extension tubes, and/or a telescope, and stacking software. But this is a good starting point.
So to get a good pic of the moon, establish when and where moonrise is. Setup your camera and focus in on the moon. Go into live view mode and zoom in on the moon on the screen. Once fully zoomed in you can manually focus. You can also sometimes see the atmospheric distortion distorting the moon on the screen. Your in mirror lock up mode already if you’re in live view mode so start snapping some shots. You will need to periodically adjust your camera and re-focus as the moon moves across the sky and a bit of trial and error might be required.
Moonrise is a helpful time because you can use the ambient light to help expose correctly for using the moon in a scene, i.e. if you’re shooting a landscape.
That’s it, that’s how I shoot the moon. If you have a different way of doing it, then by all means share it with me in the comments. I’m always looking to learn new things!


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The Moon – Shot at 300mm, f/11, ISO 200, 1/125th sec


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Thanks for Looking.
Follow me and read more of my posts here: @fiftysixnorth


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Another excellent tutorial 56N, thank you 🔆

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