Shooting the moon

[dbose]

Hi Guys

I use a Nikon D90 with 18-105 m VR lens. I have an issue while shooting moon at night. I realise that the timing was not right - it was pitch dark and the moon was quite bright (huge contrast).

However, manually focussing at 105mm at F11 or F16 with shutter speed between 4 and 8 seconds (this showed the correct shutter speed), I am always get a second reflection of the moon right next to it. This can also be seen through the view finder. I tried to move the angles etc. but nothing helped. The reflection of the moon (looks like a second point of light) was always visible in the viewfinder and the actual shot.

Can anyone help?

[Doug Pardee]

That sounds like lens flare. If you have any filters on the lens, remove them. Otherwise, there's not much to be done for it.

Also, that's way overexposed for a shot of the moon. The full moon itself is somewhere around Ev 13, just two stops below broad daylight. (Remember, it's being lit by broad daylight!) You didn't say what ISO you were using, but at ISO 200 and f/16, you'd expect to be around 1/50 second to get proper exposure of the moon itself. At ISO 200 and f/11, around 1/100.

You can't use the in-camera metering for moon shots. Too much dark sky to fool the meter.

Here's a site with a lot of detail: Photographing the Moon

[Sampizcat]

Hi,

In a strange coincidence, I took a photo of the moon last night. I had real trouble (exposures of 2 seconds+), until I realized I was using Matrix metering (which measures a broad area). I changed to Spot metering, and placed my selected focus point over the moon and hey presto, suddenly my shutter time went down to 1/500 a second and I managed to get some really nice photos.

HTH.

Cheers,
Sampizcat