Xmas eve moon in PA

[Lucas_Y]

Took this last night around 9pm

taken with Canon Rebel xt, EF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 lens
1/3200sec, f5.6, 300mm focal length.


I think as a picture it would be more interesting with another object in the foreground. Tree or building or at least some other visible stars. What do you all think?

 

[Jbs]

what iso is this at?


and im not sure much else is going to light up at night with that high of a shutter speed

 

[Lucas_Y]

That shot the iso is 1600. I took about 30 shots of the moon last night, trying different iso's and shutter speeds. This one turned out best. Still learning composition, camera adjustment and basically everything all at once.

 

[astrostu]

I would highly recommend (as long as you have a tripod) taking it at a much lower ISO and a slower shutter speed. The above image is very grainy and shows color noise which are due to the high ISO you used.

The full moon is over 10,000x brighter than any other object in the night sky, so if you properly expose the moon you're not going to get another astronomical object in there. You would need to do two exposures and then merge them later. Additionally, if you expose the moon properly, the sky should appear black (since the moon is about 4,000,000x brighter than the sky in a smallish city) and so any foreground object will also appear black, not giving you a silhouette. So you'd again need to do two different exposures and merge them.

 

[ksharlow]

astrostu,

When you merge, do you put the darker image below? I haven't struggled with merging. The top one seems to override the bottom exposure.

 

[astrostu]

When you merge, do you put the darker image below? I haven't struggled with merging. The top one seems to override the bottom exposure.

I haven't done this in awhile, but I would think the "darker" image (the one with the moon properly exposed) would be on top. Then experiment with some of the Layer Blending Modes in PS and see which one overlays it properly. You may need to selectively decrease the brightness of the saturated moon in the other layer in order to get it to come out right, though.

 

[ksharlow]

Thanks! I am going to practice a bit more soon while the moon is still full looking.

 

[Alex_B]

if i remember right, the moon is quite bright so one does not need high iso at all ... 1/3200 secs is certainly total overkill

get a good tripod and a remote


visible stars you will only get in the same exposure, if there is an eclipse so the moon gets really dark. i posted one some time ago, will try to dig it out again.

 

[Alex_B]

found it:

ISO 800
f/4
1 second

(300mm)

but as i said, this was a total eclipse so the moon was very dark.

 

[ksharlow]

Beautiful! I love it!!!!!!

 

[Alex_B]

Thanks but as said, you cannot wait for such a thing to happen. so you will need more than one exposure normally to achieve a similar effect.