7

CHAPTER
NIGHT AND LOW-LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY / The Nighttime Sky

The problem is that the moon takes up too little

of the frame to meter correctly, and even at

600mm, the spot-metering circle doesn’t get

enough of the moon alone to accurately judge the

exposure. The following is a good starting place

to capture the moon correctly; however, you need

to keep in mind that the moon does not have a

standard brightness and is affected by the atmo-

spheric conditions where you are photographing.

you shoot the moon with a long lens or as part of
an overall night sky composition, the images will
usually be a little disappointing.

To get the moon looking as big as possible, you
need to use as long a focal length as possible, and
it does help to wait for the perigee (the time
when the moon is closest to earth on its elliptical
journey). There is a great Web site that calculates
the date and time of the perigee for each month
at http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html. If
you really want to fill the frame with the moon,
you will need to have a very long lens, a great tri-
pod, and the right date and time.

When photographing with very long lenses —
400mm and longer — a tripod, or at least a
monopod, is important to use because the length
and weight of the lens make it very difficult to
handhold steady enough to get a sharp image.
The length of the lens magnifies the slightest
movement.

Exposure settings

Compared to star trails and other celestial photog-
raphy, photographing the moon is easy, especially
if you keep in mind that it is a lot brighter than
you think. If you are using a very long lens and the
moon actually fills the frame, then the built-in
metering might work, but if you allow the camera
to pick the settings, you will be disappointed. In
Figures 7-8 and 7-9, I photographed the same
moon with the same camera. However, in Figure
7-8, I allowed the camera to pick the settings and
in Figure 7-9 I used manual settings. The auto set-
tings rendered the moon very bright and the sky a
blue instead of black, while the manual settings
gave me the look I was going for: a black sky and a
clearly visible and detailed moon.

ABOUT THIS PHOTO The moon photographed using the auto

mode of the camera did not properly expose for the details because the

vast areas of sky threw the metering off. Taken at 1 second, f/8.0, and

ISO 200.

7-8

7-9

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Using the manual mode I was able to get

a better photo of the moon with much more detail. Taken at 1/250 sec-

ond, f/8, and ISO 1250.