Nightime over H20

[spellbound]

I noticed the relatively full moon last night so I headed down the road to my local beach to capture some reflection over the water. I took several shots (see flickr...link below) but struggled to capture both the moon and reflection in focus. Any tips that someone may have would be great for next time

Here is one of the better ones.

[windrider86]

I'm quite fond if the relflection int he water but the bright moon is very overwhelming. It might benefit from either toning down the bright area or crop your photo down to where just the bottom section of the moon is showing.
Otherwise everything else looks marvelous!

[spellbound]

Yea that's what I was thinking too. I really struggled with the bright moon.

[NWatkajtys7]

This is fantastic! I'm not quite sure where to look though both the moon and the reflection togeather does seem a little overwhelming like windrider said. Next time you may want to try two different compositions. One of less of the water and more of the moon. Or one more of the water and less of the sky area. I do like what you've got here though. The soft foggy background is a nice little detail to the photo. The texture in the clouds is great too. Wonderful night shot.

-Nate

[spellbound]

Thanks for your comments NWatkajtys7...much appreciated.

I do have several others that I took that night, some without the moon in the frame. I'll get to those later today and post some up.

I was trying to get the reflection and the moon in the shot without the moon blowing out like it has. Admittedly this was impossible due to the size and brightness of the full moon.

It was fun though!

[Ewie]

This a very nice shot, I like it a lot.

Regarding focus, everything is sharp as a tack except the moon and reflection as you noted. The reason for this is pretty simple really, you used a long exposure right? About 13 seconds looking at the EXIF. The moon continues to move and the water shimmers hence why they both appear to be out of focus. Unfortunatley the moon is over exposed also which gives it the "ghostly" look. I still like the shot... The fact that everything else is sharp suggest that you have a good stable tripod, that's half the battle won right there.

I'd suggest experimenting with shutter speed and try to get down to say 5 or 6 seconds (or less) to help freeze the moon and not over expose. If you have one, an ND graduated filter could help a little with exposure but shutter speed would suffer again. You could also try the shot at ISO400, yes noise will increase but may be acceptable depending on how large a print you want. In the worst case, noise could be reduced during post processing.

One last suggestion.. you could take two shots, one to correctly expose the moon and reflection, the second to expose the land areas and then merge the two in Photoshop. I did something similar with a shot I took of my laptop for the Ghetto lighting assignment. as seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kwozzie_nz/2195010334/ One shot to expose the LCD screen correctly, the second to expose the background lighting effect.

[spellbound]

Thanks for your insightful feedback Ewie...much appreciated.

I have several others that i'll get around to putting on flickr that aren't as blown as this one.

The merging on photoshop that you suggested is something I would love to do. As a novice on CS3 (Im learning as I go) I have no idea where to start. is there a tutorial or something that you know of that can guide me in the right direction?

[KodiakStar]

I don't know if it would be worth the effort, but a graduated ND filter may help with the moon side of it. Not sure if it would make the clouds etc too dark though.

[Micah Olson]

I really like your photo! I don't know if you saw it but I love the arrow head effect in the water!