Need some help with moon and clouds

[mirbriste]

Actually for my taste the picture above is way too taken out of a movie - it seems quite horrorfilm like and I don't like that because the natural look of the moon and of the clouds disappeared. I happen to think that you definitely should keep a natural balance in your pictures between reality and fiction. That picture is way too fiction for my personal taste, but I bet there are a lot of people who will like it

[availablelight]

Originally Posted by thegrandpoohbah

I need some advice. I was out trying to take some pictures of the sky tonight. The moon was peeking out through the clouds and the sky was just beautiful. Sadly, I seem unable to take that beauty and capture it with the camera. To get the moon exposed properly I need to shoot at f/11 with a shutter speed about 1/100-1/125th of a second and ISO at 100. When I do this all I get in the shot is the moon and the clouds are not visible. To make the clouds visible I seem to need a longer shutter speed (I was trying 10 second exposures tonight). This exposes the clouds ok but I was getting lots of subject motion blur because of the wind and the moon was way over exposed. Is there something I am missing? This just didn't seem like it should have been so difficult to do...

Don't worry, you're not alone in your quest...

Simply, it's not possible to expose a bright moon and any cloud/context, there is just far too much difference in luminance. If the moon is in the frame of a night landscape, expose for the land and let the moon blow out, perhaps stop down to f16 or so and the moon will create a nice star effect.

ANY shot you see of a landscape with a perfectly exposed moon in it is either a composite, or taken on the day after full moon at dawn, when the moon tends to set just about sunrise. This is a great time to shoot the moon in landscapes.