Moon photo query

S

Swivel

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180
Hi helpful people, now i know there are a few camera fans on here judging by the pics on sotd of which i have been impressed with.

What i would love to do, is be able to take a pic of the moon. Not just any old pic but a good one. I have a Canon 500D complete with a 18-55mm lens and a Tamron 70-300mm lens.......Oh and a tripod.

So do i need anything else, what settings should my camera be on or am i using the wrong equipment?

Any tips or can you recommend a decent lens?

Lots of questions i know for a shaving forum but i know you won't let me down. :lol:
 
A few hints:

Your lenses are fine, but they dont let in much light. You want to take a photo in a very low light environment, so a more light sensitive lens will do you good. You judge the sensitivity of the lens by the F-number. E.g. a 2/35 mm lens is a 35 mm lens, that has a lowest F-stop setting of 2 (which is very sensitive). Mu guess is that your lenses are around 3.5 - 4.0??

You can adjust the sensitivity of the sensor, that is the ISO setting. In the film days, ISO numbers told something about the grain size on the film. The larger the grain size, the larger the surface area of the individual grain, the more light sensitive. Notice the trade off: Larger grain for more sensitivity! In digital cameras this is normally obtained by parsing the collected light of several pixels into one larger pixel, again you loose resolution. The reason you will propably not see this in your images, is that before it is stored, it is resampled back into your native resolution. This means your camera has inventyed pixels for you, which are not really there...

The only good alternative is a long opening time. I would suggest you to set your camera settings to time based exposure, and manual focussing (its easy, adjust it to infinity). Then set the opening time to different intervals, say 30 sec, one minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes and so on, until you find a setting that gives you optimal image characteristics.

Hope this helps.

/Max

PS: You dont need to get a more sensitive lens, it just makes it easier.
 
Yellow Jim said:
Some good advice here.

http://photos.bahneman.com/tricks/article.php/20051007132635145

It runs contrary to what Max says though. You don't want to let too much light into the camera by using a long exposure or you lose any sort of detail and just end up with a blob of light.
Click to expand...

I just read the link, and I agree. This is a really good description. I was assuming that the moon would be a smaller part of your image area, hence the need for a lot of light to have detail in the dark areas. But this can be done by following the description in the link as well.



/Max
 
A remote shutter release helps too, stops you from wobbling a tripod mounted camera by pressing the manual button. They're not expensive and they're useful for all sorts of night time photography.
 
Thanks for the tips and that link looks interesting. all i need now is a clear night.

Any of you got any sample pics you're willing to post up?
 
Hello.

I had a go at it myself.

4630205074_7882475cb1.jpg


4555430839_715bd947e1.jpg


Both of these were taken through the open skylight in my loft on different nights. I used a 300mm F4 lens with a 1.4x convertor fitted giving me 420mm F.56 and the camera was handheld - no tripod.. Both images have been cropped somewhat, but I was fairly pleased with them.

The key, in my opinion, to getting an interesting moon shot is getting it at the right phase, so that the shadows over the moon pick out some of the crater detail. That's why I prefer the first shot to the second.

Ian
 
Swivel said:
Nice pictures, i'm fairly new to photography only having a decent camera for about 6 months so i maybe asking a few questions.
Click to expand...

Feel free. There are a few of us on here that do a bit, some even professionally.

Ian
 
ok... first let me get rid of a few myths surrounding moon photos

1) you dont need a long shutter speed
2) you dont need a fast lens with a big aperture
3) you dont need a tripod
4) you dont need a cable release

2938780269_190fc77f0c_z.jpg


that was taken... hand held... 1/250th of a second at F11

if anything a small aperture lens is just as well off, as you're going to be stopping down to at least F8-f16 in order to get a nice sharp photo at that kind of range. The moon is enormously bright. As soon as its filling even a 5th of your viewfinder, it'll be throwing so much light into your camera that a fast shutter is absolutely necessary.

This next one was again at 1/250th of a second, and this time at F8.

2423581261_4ce1dfccdc_z.jpg
 
Now I'm at home, I can tell you that:

First image ISO 1000. Shutter 1250th. Aperture f5.6

Second image: ISO 640. Shutter 1250th. Aperture f5.6

The moon was further away and not as bright on the first image, hence the much higher ISO. You need to keep the shutter speed as high as you can to minimise camera shake.

A loooong shutter speed can sometimes make results poor, as the earth's rotation causes the moon to 'move' within the frame.

Ian
 
I think shrink's observations are spot on. Before trying it, a lot of people talked about using long exposures and other tips that didn't work.

This is what worked for me, I was able to take some half-decent shots with the compact (haven't tried with the DSLR yet...)

Set the camera to manual mode and manual focus - see below why
Use the maximum zoom your camera can achieve - in my case it was 210mm, 6x
Set manual focus to infinity - this is very important, the camera will find it very hard to focus the empty sky
f/8 - this was the maximum the camera allowed, getting a lower amount of light in allows better definition of such a bright object
Shutter speed - now we get to where "it depends". You have to adjust depending on the select f and the Moon's brightness. I my case, somewhere between 1/15 (lunar eclipse) and 1/80 (full moon) worked. Try different shutter speeds and see which setting works for you.

Other things that help: use a tripod, and you don't need a cable release. Use you camera's timer to set a 5 or 10 second delay. The Moon isn't moving any time soon!

Some examples taken with my "poor" Canon A710IS.

Full Moon:

2347716489_b72807b1b3.jpg


Lunar Eclipse:

2769401762_7329d777c3.jpg
 
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