Will the moon damage my camera sensor.

[martanh]

Tonight i saw the very beautiful moon above my house so I try to take yhe picture with my new D7000 18-105mm . I always use shutter speed from 15-30s and f from f/9 -f/13. But now I'm worrying about sensor because I took photo directly the moon without any filter. Will it damage my camera sensor? Thank you so much for your answer.

 

[Geaux]

nope, and too long of a shutter for the moon imo.

 

[Derrel]

Earth's moon is illuminated by light from the Sun. As such, the proper exposure for the Moon is for an object lighted by SUNLIGHT.

I am not kidding you. Think in terms of a daylight, sunny daytime exposure setting, and you will have the right exposure for the moon. Photographing the moon will not damage your sensor.

 

[480sparky68 67]

X2.

The reason you had such a long exposure is because your camera meter took into account the dark sky.

 

[martanh]

Ok thank you so much for all ur opinion, and do you think the time is too long for moonlight? I try to set it smaller but it gives a dark picture. One more thing i want to ask for advice is if i want to spend most of my time to take sunset or sunrise pic or even direct the sun , do i need any filer to protect my camera?

 

[480sparky68 67]

15-30 sec exposure, and it's still dark?

Are you shooting at ISO 8?

Post an image, that would help a lot.

 

[martanh]

Here is those pictures.

#1 ISO 125 , f/9 , 30s

#2 f/13 , 20s

#3 f/9, 13s

#4 f/9,15s

Hope to receive some advice.
Thank you.

 

[z1rick]

I made the same mistake when I first shot the moon, way over exposed. I started out at iso 200, f11, and 1/350 or so, then bracket up and down.

 

[martanh]

Finally, I can post pics. ^^

 

[LaFoto]

If you want to show structures on the moon, you have to take photos of it with daylight settings, as the moon is very bright. Your camera will "shout" "too dark" at you, but just ignore those "shouts", as the camera mostly sees the dark sky around it and therefore "thinks" "it is dark, I need a long exposure". If, however (like it may have been the case when you saw the moon and these clouds) you primarily want to show the light the clouds take up by the light of the moon, you might wish to let go of all the structures (craters and such) and overexpose the moon some to rightly expose for the clouds. That would ask for some longer shutter speeds, of course. So quite much depends on what you want to achieve with your photo. In all of these, though, I feel you failed in both as there must have been a strong wind going up where the clouds were so they dashed past the moon and you only get stripes because of your long shutter speeds. While - I must admit that - THAT effect might also be a desired one... but these don't look like you meant to show the motion... Try and error is so easily done with digital photography. You can do so many test photos with many different settings, and you will learn which setting works best for what purpose.

 

[dots]

Photographing the moon will not damage your sensor.

But it might damage the moon. Due to cheese oscillations.

 

[KmH]

While the moon indeed shines from reflected sunlight, the Moon isn't very reflective (albedo).

The moon only reflects an average of about 14% of the sunlight that hits it.

100% reflective is an albedo of 1.0. Fresh snow has an albedo of about 0.9, while charcoal has an albedo of about 0.04. The Moon's average albedo is 0.136.

But that's very bright compared to the balcknes that surrounds the Moon, so the cameras light meter can be fooled if the meter is used in an averaging mode like Evaluative/Matrix or even Center-weighted metering set to a large center size.

 

[Ballistics]

Hope this helps: http://photos.sjrdesign.net/documents/photoguide_moon.pdf

 

[dom yo]

haha KmH why do you know something like that. Cool fact though.

 

[ann]

Don't want to detrail the thread, but last night flying home, I noticed the sun setting on one side of the plane and the moon on the other. It was a lovely moon at that level, and Oh , what i would have done for a camera at that time! I would have been parallel to the moon and wouldn't have taken a long lens to fill the frame. Oh, well , another shot just for the heart.