Why does my moon look like the sun?I took this

I took this shoot a couple nights ago. My wife came home from work and thought the moon looked pretty and thought I should take a couple photos of it. Even though I knew neither my 18-55 kit lens nor the local landscape/scene in front of my house would provide a very compelling shot, I figured it would still be good practice. I was surprised at the results and was baffled that the moon looked more like the sun in my shots. I used a tripod and tried a variety of exposures, but the moon was very similar in all of them. Why did it turn out this way? What should I have done differently?



P.S. Sorry about the thread title.

 

i do think that it is because of your shutter speed? the longer the shutter speed, the more lights came in..

 

I learned (on this forum actually - LaFoto, please let me know if I'm explaining this correctly!) that the moon is a lot brighter than you probably think - I think if you are using matrix metering, you will not get correct values for exposing the moon correctly and it will be overexposed because the rest of the scene is really dark which the Matrix metering is taking into account.

I think you need to try spot metering or just increase your shutter speed.

 

As above, I think your exposure was too long.

Try settings like (going on memory) ISO 100 or 200, f/8 to f/11, shutter at 1/15 to 1/40. Oh and turn autofocus off once you have focus set.

The moon is very bright and moves at a pretty good clip, so do not meter off of it but rather to the side. You can also take and merge one shot metered just to the side with one shot metered for the black sky (I think).

 

So you're both saying that you think the moon is overexposed? The rest is pretty close to what it was actually was like that night. I wish I would've kept them, but I had some much darker (lower exposure) where the moon was still "shining".

 

The moon requires a high shutterspeed of around 1/125 sec at f.4 because it is much brighter than the foreground. You are trying to do the impossible. Combining both the foreground and moon with proper exposure requires some creativity.

skieur

 

think of it as a backlit background

 

Yes, I think the moon is overexposed and that's what the others are saying too.

 

My memory sucks tonight. Thanks skier for the correction. I went back and looked at a few of mine and shutterspeed was in the 1/60 to 1/250 range and aperature from f/5.6 to f/11 (1.7 TC attached to 300mm f/4)

Awesome photo to boot!

 

Use a lot of negative exposure compensation if using matrix metering, or just use spot metering on the moon. Problem solved.

 

You have to use a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the movement of the moon. I know that's a problem if you want to maintain detail in the trees. I think the moon is actually equal to daylight when is comes to exposure, or at least close. That would mean about 1/400 of a sec at f16 and iso 400.

 

I took a number of shots of a full moon a couple of months ago and was surprised at how over exposed they were. I tried again the next night and the way I finally got decent exposures was to ignore the meter and look at the histogram.