How to take photo of moon over sea

[shubham]

Hi All,

I want to learn to take good photos. Whenever I visit the beach, the moon and it's reflection over the sea looks very beautiful. But whenever I try to take a photo of it I cannot get the right settings. The exposure is always too long and the waves somewhat ruin the reflection of the moon. What is the way to take such a photo.

This is link to one of my tries. ... https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Thanks in advance

[Krusty79]

The water is moving too much during the time it takes to expose the moon. I would take one shot for the moon, one for the water and copy the moon on to the exposure for the water. Or use a layer mask.

[nikonkid]

The moon is much brighter than most people think, and is usually overexposed. I would also suggest taking two shots, one fast shutter for the moon, then overlay that onto the sea (which looks good imo, the motion blur adds to the shot).

[mbrobich]

What about using a tripod, 100 ISO, close the shutter to maybe F8-10 and do a longer exposure to slowly bring it back up ?

This is kinda what I tried here. Shot at 9:38pm at night, 30 second exposure:

[navcom]

Another tip for compositions like yours is to use a graduated neutral density filter (not a solid one...a graduated one). As was stated, the moon is much brighter than you think...at least relative to the dark surroundings. Most people think of the sun when they think of using an ND grad but it works just as well at night..and that moon is really more like the sun with it's relative brightness.

Place the feathered area of the ND grad on the horizon and use the shaded area to push back the intensity of the moon. This will help produce a dynamic range that is easier for the camera to handle and will pull out detail in the foreground.

Even before an ND grad, you definitely need to use a tripod. You will not get quality results without one, especially at night. I would also recommend using a remote shutter switch or shutter cable to take any vibrations away from the camera.

Hope that helps!

[RichardTaylor]

It is possible if the weather co-operates.

This evening the cloud cover stopped us getting the full moon coming out of the ocean.
Even then there was still a little bit of haze.
There are other photographers on the beach and the "warm" lighting is from nearby artificial lighting..
A grad filter was not used , however it was shoot in RAW and has had a fair bit of PPing.
A tripod and remote release was used.

If you were willing to shoot wide open (f4 for this lens) and at high ISO (3200) and so a bit of noise reduction when PPing you could get away with around 1 second exposures.


A larger image is on my flickr stream.



Camera Canon EOS 5D
Exposure 5
Aperture f/7.1
Focal Length 58 mm
ISO Speed 800
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program Manual
Date and Time (Original) 2011:05:18 18:39:25+10:00

[drr0b]

Very nice, Richard!

Since you were on a tripod, it would have been great to get a second exposure, about 1/100 s or maybe less at ISO100 to get the detail in the moon, then blend em together.... I'm definitely not knocking what you did though!

[dlbiininja]

Richard that is a nice shot. I'm going to have to head to the coast and get some night time shots like that some time. When it warms up around here.

[RichardTaylor]

Thanks and good luck. Take torch, it may come in real handy.

[Marianne*]

That's an awesome picture Richard!
Just wondering, you have a 5 second exposure right? But the waves seem pretty defined still, I would have thought they would be much more blurry with a 5s exposure?