Photographing the moon

[Amol]

Hi guys!

Just stumbled upon DPS ... thanks to google .. and am mighty happy to get in touch with all you photography geeks.

I have always wanted to take night pictures .. especially with the moon in the background.

However the moon always appears smeared in the images and I am unable to do much abt it. I have a Panasonic DMC TZ5 model and the attached image is taken with a tripod on.

Any suggestions to improvise on the attached image would be welcome.

[Ali QJo]

What settings are you using?

[FromtheBackofaHorse]

I am still playing with getting a suitable moon shot but I have determined that when mine look like that, I left the shutter open TOO long. My only real advise is practice, practice, practice.

Oh, and I right down the settings on photos that other people have used and try to duplicate those.

[jakethepig]

Hello Amol and welcome to our friendly family here at DPS. You have come to a great site. I got some decent moon images. Remember the moon is on a dark sky but it is also very bright. So you need to reduce the light coming into the lens. Try using a faster shutter or/and higher fstop. You may lose some of the detail in the buildings but just keep trying different settings, eventually you will find the shot. I look forware to watching your progress. Keep posting.

Jake.

[NixPack]

Are you using manual settings or auto settings? I am far from experienced with my photography skills. I have yet to take a photo of the moon using my manual settings but as jake answered above, even though the sky is dark the moon is very bright b/c, obviously, that is the sun reflecting off of it. You can actually start with a Sunny 16 setting meaning--whatever your ISO is you set your shutter speed to that and then you set your aperture to f16. This, however, is just a starting point. You will have to make adjustments to get the exact exposure you are looking for. I would suggest bracketing--take one shot at the exposure that looks to be metered correctly, then stop down one f-stop and take another shot and then go up one f-stop (from the first exposure) and take another. You should have a correctly exposed photo with one of those 3 shots. You can also bracket more by going down 2 stops and going up 2 stops.

Use a fast shutter speed and a small aperture. You don't need to do a long exposure b/c the moon is just sunlight being reflected so think of taking pictures on a bright, sunny day.

A good zoom lens and a tri-pod will also come in handy.

I used my 70 - 300mm lens last year to zoom in and take a shot of the moon. It came out orangish looking so was not exposed correctly but I just had my camera in full auto mode and I did not use a tri-pod. I was happy with the shot b/c it was my first half-way decent attempt. When the weather warms up here in the Chicago area, I plan to shoot the moon again...using manual settings.

Wow..I've rambled. Hope I have made sense!

Here is the shot of the moon I took last summer.