Well, just had a 2nd night of our "shooting the sun going below Deception Pass Bridge workshop". The weather's been hit-n-miss, but the sunset turned out great and everyone was capturing some great shots. I was busy helping students, so I'm hoping I was able to capture some nice shots too. I'll go out again tomorrow, weather permitting. I'll get some images up here soon. Here's a shot I got from before, tonight's sun was more to the left.
While I'm thinking about it - The reason for this post; When we were hiking back to the cars, we all noticed an almost full moon slowly passing behind the clouds - Another great photo op! Maybe tomorrow.
So, with that came several questions from our group - How to Shoot The Moon - So, here's your next "Gee Whiz" shooting tricks for getting great moon shots - And an upcoming workshop. I'll add those photos samplers later.
There are two things you have to keep in mind when shooting the moon;
First - It's moving! It can actually move a distance equivalent to its diameter every 2 minutes. What this means is that if you try to go for any exposure longer than a few seconds, it will warp itself out of shape - And, the longer the exposure, the more "wiener like" it's going to become.
Second, if you're going to try and have a great, properly exposed moon with great detail and no stretching, and expect some great detail with proper exposure for your foreground objects too - Forget it! There's just too much exposure range to capture them both.
The moon can be very bright on some nights which will cause your foreground to be underexposed. If you expose for your darker foreground - expect an overly blown out & stretched moon.
Now, if you're using a wide-angle lens and the moon is small in the sky, then movement isn't as much an issue. But if you've zoomed in for a unique "Big Moon" shot - Read on.
The trick, which has been performed since the dawn of film, is to make a double exposure. That is - shoot two exposures - One for the moon and another for the foreground, without moving the camera. In the 'old days', you would shoot the 2nd image without advancing the film. Actually, it was more work than that, but that was just how those film days were - Do you still miss them? Today, we can take a couple shots of each element, setting the exposure as needed in each frame, then simply combine them in Photoshop. This provides the added benefit of a lot more control over the final image, with no wasted film and developing fees.
Ah, another digital bonus - Since you've got great moon shots, save them to drop into other photos too! But you didn't hear that here.
Exposures for the foreground should be pretty straight forward (if not, stay tuned to this blog or our Alternative Focus blog www.alternativefocus.blogspot.com for more classes or email me with questions) so go ahead and capture a couple of images, paying attention to you composition skills, then move on to your moon shots.
Now, the trick for getting a great exposure on the moon surrounded by black sky - Start with an exposure of around 1/250 second at f8 and ISO 100 for a full moon, focused on infinity. Jog to about 1/125 or 1/60 for a crescent moon. Now of course, there's going to be a bit of leeway here, depending upon other conditions, but this will get you very close.
There, you now have enough of the basic tricks for great moon shooting. Now go out and practice, study how they came out, learn what worked and more important, what didn't work, and practice again.
We've received many requests, so now we're also putting together more night & low-light photography classes, as well as some star-trail shooting.
Stay tuned to this blog and more importantly our Alternative Focus blog (www.alternativefocus.blogspot.com) for upcoming classes. You'll also find more info & links there to our Facebook, Twitter and everything else photography in the great San Juan Islands & Skagit Valley.
Thanks,
Tony
No comments:
Post a Comment