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Here’s the only picture that I have that would come close to getting clouds and moon exposed properly. I already wrote about it here: Lunar Eclipse April 2014
EXIF DATA:
Camera Model – Canon EOS REBEL T3
Lens – Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro
Software – Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.3 (Windows)
Exposure Time – 2.5 seconds
Aperture – f/8
ISO Speed – 200
Focal Length – 263 mm (35mm equiv. 420mm )
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This whole discussion made me think of some pictures that I took in Africa. There was a “fingernail” moon, just a tiny sliver, and I managed to get 2 pictures, one with the moon properly exposed to see detail in the tiny sliver that was lit up…
And the second picture exposed for the “dark” part of the moon lit only with ‘earthshine’
Speaking of combining photos in PS made me wonder if I could combine these 2 pictures. Of course, I didn’t use Photoshop, I used the GIMP, but it’s the same principle regardless of the software used.
Here’s what I ended up with…
It’s not a very good job, but I thought it was interesting anyway!
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2. There are slivers of time around the time of the full moon where you can including the natural moon in a landscape image with getting detail in both moon and sky. I do not know exactly when those times are, I’m still experimenting, but I would trust what Royce Blair says in his helpful article Into The Nigh Photography. His conclusion on the slivers of time you can do this are: “1. The night before the full moon, the moon rises just a few minutes before the sun sets; and 2. the morning of the full moon, the moon sets just before the sun is starting to rise. During these two periods, there is just enough ambient light from the setting and rising sun to give detail to the surrounding landscape — otherwise, it is too dark, and the contrast range is too great to record anything but blackness around the moon.”
I successfully shot a moon + landscape together using that technique.
The picture I took is really bad when talking of a composition. I didn’t have time to go outside with my camera so I just experimented in the kitchen taking photos through the window. The moon in the attached picture is very small, but I attached also a picture of the moon in full size resolution.
Note : I underexposed severely the photos (-1 2/3) because the moon would appeared yellow although it showed details but there wasn’t enough contrast.- This reply was modified 56 years, 6 months ago by .
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Good job, @Mr-Quebec!
I saw the moon tonight just around sunset, but I didn’t have my camera with me, so I didn’t have an opportunity to try it out. 🙁 I’m glad someone did though! I actually thought about James’s quote that you just quoted here, and wondered if it would be one of those “windows”.
The picture is definitely underexposed. Could you post one that is brighter, even if there isn’t enough detail in the moon? I’m just curious exactly what the difference would be…
Great! You’re right, the pictures are very dark, but at least you can see some detail in the foreground as well as in the moon. That’s the cool part! Now it’s time to refine it.
I would have shot earlier. The moon would have been closer to the horizon and the foreground would have been brighter. Sure, the moon may have appeared slightly “transparent” but that what keeps it from blowing out. If you’re going for texture in the moon, exposing for the moon like you did in your shot is certainly how I would have done it.
I was really hoping to shoot the moon this weekend but sadly we’ve got clouds and rain here in WV. It’s steadily raining outside right now and there’s a 100% chance tomorrow. 🙁 I’ve been scouting out good locations to shoot the moon nearby, though, so if it decides to clear off last minute, I’ll at least know where to go!
I reedited my photo again to help with the underexposed look, but I think that’s the maximum I can do without affecting too much the moon’s details.
I agree that it would have been much better if I could have gone earlier, but it wasn’t possible. 🙁
At buddingphotographer’s request, I attached also one with no exposure correction to let you know what it looked like. Both pictures look almost identical!- This reply was modified 56 years, 6 months ago by .
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Yeah, I would guess that it’s better to underexpose, and brighten in post, than to overexpose and try to recover detail. The moon looks much more natural when it’s exposed properly with the foreground darker than vice versa. Ideally you would “merely” catch it at the right time to get everything exposed properly. 🙂
Yup it’s not always possible to shoot at the perfect times. That happens all the time to me. But I’m learning to plan ahead now, using Google calendar and free resources online, such as suncalc.net.
Yes, the vast majority of pictures look better when recovering details from underexposed areas versus recovering details from overexposed areas. In fact, it’s impossible to recover any data from a “blown out” portion of an image. In landscape photography, it is very easy to blow out the clouds in the sky when exposing for the rest of the scene. Therefore, I am almost always underexposing landscapes to makes sure there is always detail to play with in the sky.
I just recently came across some of my old pictures from Mongolia, taken with my Rebel T3 and the cheap Sigma 70-300mm.
Re-Edited in Lightroom:
IMG_6476
ISO Speed – 200
Shutter Speed – 1/320 seconds
Aperture Value – F 6.3
Focal Length – 263 mmIMG_6846
ISO Speed – 100
Shutter Speed – 1/15 seconds
Aperture Value – F 8
Focal Length – 300 mmI’m amazed by the detail in these shots! I guess the clear skies there must be part of the trick, but I can’t believe the shutter speed that IMG_6846 was taken at, it must have been taken with a tripod, I don’t really remember.
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Yes, very sharp.
I wonder if you couldn’t artificially blur out the sky to get rid of the grain. Duplicate the layer in GIMP, blur it, and then mask out the detailed areas of the moon. Just an idea.
That’s the idea! Never would have known it was artificially blurred. Did it look too fake blurring it until the sky wasn’t blotchy and the gradients were smooth?
Well, I didn’t really push it far enough to know whether it would look fake or not. I knew that I didn’t want it to look “plasticky”, so I just blurred it enough to smooth out the grain. I suppose I could just blur it completely and see what it would look like. I also noticed that still looked sorta blotchy, but it wasn’t grainy, so I let it go.
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