Super Moon Over Chicago Harbor Lighthouse
This is from the supermoon of 2011. Last year I did not have a plan. I only knew that I wanted to get something in the foreground for the shot. We started downtown and started walking toward Navy Pier. I hoped that I could find a composition with the Ferris Wheel or something on the pier. Nothing would work. We had 5 minutes until the moon rise and we were almost to the end of the pier. And we didn't know exactly where the moon would rise. But when we ran out of land at the end of the pier, the moon began to rise just to the left of the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse. Sometimes you have great plans. Sometimes you just get lucky.
Out of Chicago Photo Walk #3
The photo walk is on! The forecast calls for a 10% chance of rain. I hope to see you in front of Adler Planetarium tonight at 6PM. More details here. I will post details tomorrow about posting your images for the photo contest for a chance at the Topaz Labs software bundle.
I love the Photographer's Ephemeris App on my iPad. This is where I hope to be at 7:43 tonight.
I have been debating all week what I should write about for our Supermoon photo walk tonight. Will there be any clear sky? I should write about how to shoot the moon. Is it going to rain? Well, I already talked a little about shooting after the rain here. There will, almost certainly, be clouds to work with. So you might want to read my post, Working With Clouds.
And then my buddy and fantastic photographer, Jason Mrachina, emailed me this. Jason is famous (infamous?) for his emails that could be sold as eBooks. This is an email that he sent to another photographer and then offered to me for this article.
Shooting the Moon by Jason Mrachina
Shooting the moon is easier than you think. One thing everyone (including me) gets wrong when they start is shooting it like it’s a “night shot”. Most people aim their camera at the moon on auto settings and are surprised when the camera renders it as a giant white orb with no detail. One interesting thing about the moon is that the dust/rocks are somewhat reflective (like a stop sign). So at full moon it looks REALLY bright to the camera.
The moon is reflecting sunlight at the camera in the middle of a really dark sky. When this happens, it’s easy to over expose the shot. So what you actually need to do is set the camera up for a typical “daytime” shot and just know that the background is going to be really dark (it’s the night sky, so who cares).
Shooting the night sky, particularly the moon, is the ONE and only time that your settings will always be the same on your camera (no matter where in the world you are). The sky is always black, and the moon always reflects the same amount of sunlight. There is a chart of these settings below. Simply set your camera to Manual, spot metering and the ISO that you wish. Follow the lines and columns until you get the settings that you want. I usually use ISO 400 and 1/250th. Your Aperture will be between f11 and f16 depending on how bright you want it.
Some other tips:
1) The moon is moving – very quickly. It will only take 4 or 5 minutes for the moon to move out of your frame when zoomed in. Be sure to keep an eye on your composition.
2) Use spot metering on your camera to make sure you get an accurate reading for your light meter.
3) Plan on shooting in Auto-bracketing if you know how to do this.
4) If you are shooting on a tripod, turn your IS off.
5) If you are shooting on a tripod, focus this manually by using live view with 10x view and manual focus. I feel this has better results than AF and/or using the infinity setting on the zoom ring
6) Use a cable release for your shutter.
7) Don’t let your shutter speed go too slow or you will be getting light trails.
If you want to shoot something in the foreground, you will be doing this in multiple images. It’s impossible to get a good exposure of a foreground object like a city, building, car or your house and still have the moon look good / right. Just shoot the moon first until you are happy and then shoot the rest of your image separately.
This page talks about how the brightness of the moon changes: http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut26-1.htm
This page has a good chart of exposures for all the moon phases: http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro...hoto/index.htm
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Lunar Photography Exposure Guide (@f/16)
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ISO Film Speed
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Full Moon
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Gibbous
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1st Quarter
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Thick Crescent
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Thin Crescent
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Earthshine
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25
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1/15
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1/8
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1/4
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1/2
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1
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50
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1/30
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1/15
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1/18
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1/4
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1/2
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100
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1/60
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1/30
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1/15
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1/8
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1/4
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200
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1/125
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1/60
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1/30
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1/15
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1/8
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40 to 80 sec.
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400
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1/250
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1/125
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1/60
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1/30
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1/15
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20 to 40 sec.
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800
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1/500
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1/250
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1/125
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1/60
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1/30
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10 to 20 sec.
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1600
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1/1000
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1/500
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1/250
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1/125
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1/60
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5 to 10 sec.
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3200
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1/2000
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1/1000
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1/300
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1/250
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1/125
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2 to 5 sec.
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