1st attempt at a Moon shot...

Zach

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Could be my monitor but seems under-exposed and centered.
 
This is a documentary type shot- it is expected to be centered. You could crop a bit. Maybe some longer exposure? That's a lot of light hitting your camera though for 1/250 and F18 and 200 ISO, so it looks like you have plenty of room to play around with settings.
 
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You have to remember the moon is very bright, especially a full or close to full moon. Normally when shooting the moon I use the following settings:

ISO- 100
Aperture- f/8
Shutter- 1/250

I would strongly recommend using a tripod and cable release if you are shooting with a telephoto lens otherwise you will have to bump up the ISO to get your shutter speed up. If you are not using a tripod you will want to keep your minimum shutter speed at a 1:1 ratio with your focal length or even faster if you are using a crop sensor camera like me. If I wanted to shoot the moon hand held without a tripod with my 50D and 400mm lens, I would want my shutter speed to be 1/640 or faster (crop factor x focal length, or 1.6 x 400mm = 640).

This is a starting point so you may have to adjust your aperture or shutter according to the actual brightness. Here is a photo I took last night with the above settings (EXIF data should be intact) using my Canon 50D and 400mm f/5.6 lens.

IMG_37416_s.jpg
 
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Thanks for the info everyone. I'll try these settings, but to my knowledge the D50's lowest ISO is 200. What can I do to compensate for that? I am using a tripod.

Also, what setting should I be using for "image size" and "image quality?" None of my shots came out that large.

Use lowest ISO setting. Most Canons are 100, most Nikons are 200 (in my experience).

Image quality/size should be the highest, but that's a general rule of thumb. Unless by "large" you mean that the moon is more "close-up," as in |)\/8's example vs. Zach's ... that's just a case of a longer effective focal length.

I also have to say that, in my opinion, both of their shots are under-exposed. After looking at the histograms on each, I would say 1.5-2x as long of an exposure would work better.
 
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Use lowest ISO setting. Most Canons are 100, most Nikons are 200 (in my experience).

Image quality/size should be the highest, but that's a general rule of thumb. Unless by "large" you mean that the moon is more "close-up," as in |)\/8's example vs. Zach's ... that's just a case of a longer effective focal length.

I also have to say that, in my opinion, both of their shots are under-exposed. After looking at the histograms on each, I would say 1.5-2x as long of an exposure would work better.

I adjusted the brightness and contrast to what looked good on my monitor, perhaps I need to recalibrate. That photo is also cropped quite a lot. Below you will find the original with no adjustments other than converting from RAW to JPG, which looks slightly overexposed on my monitor. You will also find a 100% crop of the original.

IMG_37416_from_raw.jpg


IMG_37416_100.jpg
 
Yes, that's what I meant by "larger" I didn't realize he was using a 400mm. I'm really new at this. What settings do I need to use to prevent under-exposure?

I think I've pimped this twice today already, but take a look at the lunar photography guide I wrote for this forum. 7 pages of everything you should need to know to get started.


I adjusted the brightness and contrast to what looked good on my monitor, perhaps I need to recalibrate. That photo is also cropped quite a lot. Below you will find the original with no adjustments other than converting from RAW to JPG, which looks slightly overexposed on my monitor. You will also find a 100% crop of the original.

IMG_37416_from_raw.jpg

On my monitor it looks under-exposed rather than over-exposed. While the histogram has bimodal peaks at just less than 50% gray, the brightest part is at 81.6% gray (206 of 255 8-bit levels). If it were my photo, I would stretch the histogram so that the entire brightness range is used plus play with the curves a little bit to bring out some more contrast, but not over-do it as I've seen many folks do.
 
Since I've already posted the photo in another thread, I hope this isn't bad form to repeat it here. Taken tonight when the moon was ~30° above the horizon. I'm curious on any thoughts of it.


Moon-6-web.jpg


Thanks and apologies if it is considered highjacking. I'll gladly remove if requested.​
 
No problem Aye-Non. What camera, lens and settings were you using?
 

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