Moon with no zoom

[Steamboat]

I have been frustrated trying to get shots that have the moon in them. I'm not looking to take a picture of THE moon, I just want to take a night shot that happens to have the moon in it. Here is my attempt:
http://www.musicaeviva.com/images/stories/moon%20and%20tree2.jpg

Is it possible to do this shot and have the moon look like the moon instead of looking like a blurry white ball? What would I do to make that happen?

edit: shot on a tripod with remote trigger, not sure about the rest of the settings.

 

[lockwood81]

Is it possible to do this shot and have the moon look like the moon instead of looking like a blurry white ball? What would I do to make that happen?

You would need to expose for the moon to have it look like that. Currently your shutter speed is to slow, causing the white ball.

 

[dcclark]

The problem is that the moon is very bright compared to the rest of the nighttime scenery around you. Your camera is tricked by all of the darkness, and tries to take a long exposure (so that the dark areas show up) -- which means that too much light comes in from the moon, and it looks all blown up (and the long shutter speed makes the photo blurry, as your hands shake).

The answer could be several things. One choice is to put your camera into Shutter priority mode (or manual, if you can), and set a shutter speed around 1/200 or 1/100 second. Then take a photo of the moon, and you'll find that the moon shows up much better. BUT -- the rest of the scene will be very dark, because there isn't much light.

So your other option is, just expose in such a way that the rest of the scene looks good, and the moon will unfortunately be a big blurry white ball. Some people solve this problem by taking a separate shot of the moon (as described above), and photoshopping it in to the photo. That actually works pretty well, if you have the time and a little skill.

 

[LarryD]

Hmm.. It seems that I've seen this same photo and question a few times...

The short answer is that it is difficult at best, impossible at worst..

As has been said, the moon is very bright. Remember, even though it is night time on earth, the reason we see the moon is because it is broad daylight there.........therefore, you are taking a picture of broad daylight..

If the moon co-operates, then you need to take the picture at twilight, or even in the daytime and under-expose it to appear to be night time..

The second option is a composite, or double exposure where you properly expose each one separately and combine..

Here is a quick example of a composite moon/tree:

 

[jdwyer]

Larry, is your example just two separate photos combined in photoshop?
it looks very realistic. how did you do this?