Shooting the moon

[Glenda]

A few of us intend heading to the local beach this Sunday to shoot the moon. I've never been happy with shots of the moon I've taken. I want more a scene with the moon rising rather than a close up of the moon. Any advice re settings appreciated. I will be using the D7000 with either a Tokina 11-16 f2.8 or Tamron 24-70 f2.8.

[nardes]

The brightness range between the disc of the moon and any foreground scenery is way too big to record details in both in a single shot.

The Moon is a very bright object and typically to see any details on the lunar disc, you would be shooting at around 1/500 sec at F5.6 with ISO100.

This combination of settings would not record any foreground scenery at night time, other than bright street lights!

I haven’t shot evening/night scenery but I’m guessing they would require something like 1 to 20 secs at say, F8 to capture tree silhouettes, night time clouds, etc.

You may need to expose differently for each object and then try to blend the frames in your processing app.

Cheers

Dennis

[Mark L]

What time is the moon rising?
Maybe expose for the moon but use some flash to highlight something in the foreground? Got any filters?

[Glenda]

Moon rise here is about 5.15 and sunset at 5.20 so hopefully should have some light. Will probably bracket and try to blend after. I do have some ND and GND filters but haven't had enough practice with them. Will have a torch to paint but will have to make sure I'm not too close to other photogs. Hubby and I discovered recently we can't stand too close when using a remote trigger either as we trigger each others cameras.

[nardes]

Moon rise here is about 5.15 and sunset at 5.20 so hopefully should have some light. Will probably bracket and try to blend after. I do have some ND and GND filters but haven't had enough practice with them. Will have a torch to paint but will have to make sure I'm not too close to other photogs. Hubby and I discovered recently we can't stand too close when using a remote trigger either as we trigger each others cameras.

On some remote triggers you can set different channels so that you don’t trigger other remotes. On the one I have there is a series of 4 tiny physical switches that let you select Channel 1, 2, 3 or 4. Some remotes may do this via the software settings.

So, if you are triggering on say Channel 1 and your husband is set to say Channel 4, in theory you should not trigger each other’s camera.

Cheers

Dennis

[SteveInNZ]

It's a bit late now for this month, but if you want a nicely lit foreground and a full moon, go the day (or two) before the full moon. A full moon rises at the time that the sun sets, so a day earlier puts the moon in the sky during the blue hour.