Trying to photo the moon

I agree that the second one is somewhat better than the first (less noise), and David1961 showed that some NR can help.

But I have to wonder why there is so much noise in the first place? Any detail that you captured is lost in the noise. You could easily go as slow as 1/100 sec

Another David

Yes spot on

The op's 1/500s is reducing the amount of light hitting the sensor by 2.25 stops when compared to 1/100s as posted earlier.

Thanks David, glad I did ok! That's amazing what you just did to my second image. I can see how you've removed the grain from the darker patches of the moon. Yes it pops more now, you've struck a good balance between my darker one which looks a bit flat and my brighter one which lacks contrast. You're very good at post processing.

I had tried auto ISO but it put it to 400 and was over exposed. But I can't remember what my aperture and shutter speed was, they might have already been letting too much light in.

Regarding moon phases and harsh lighting, yes, I'm hoping to get a waning moon shot at the weekend, I'm keeping my eye on this moon calendar


Do you know why my exif data doesn't show when hovering over my photos? I shot in raw, edited and exported from lightroom as a tiff file and then cropped in paint 3D and saved as a png file.

Merlin5 said:

Do you know why my exif data doesn't show when hovering over my photos? I shot in raw, edited and exported from lightroom as a tiff file and then cropped in paint 3D and saved as a png file.

Click to expand...

You could do all the processing in Lightroom and export as a JPG with EXIF to share in social.

I haven't read all of the replies, so I don't know if this was brought up. A rule of thumb about shooting the moon is the Looney 11 rule :

Merlin5 said:

Set the aperture to f/11, and set the ISO to the reciprocal of the shutter speed.

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That's a good place to start, but keep in mind that the moon is travelling, and the longer the focal length, the shorter the shutter speed needed to prevent blurring. I remember hearing the formula at one point, but I can't for the life of me find it or remember it for the moon proper. I know the moon moves much faster across the sky with the stars, so the 500-rule can't really apply.

I can say from my experience that on a 500mm lens, I can safely shoot 1/80 without perceptible smearing.

2 things you should take into consideration when trying to shoot the moon:

1. The moon is effectively in direct sunlight. Your light meter might be trying to meter the whole night sky. As such, use the Looney 11 rule as a starting point and shoot manually if you have to.
2. Shooting the full moon means that the sun is directly overhead from the sun--and thus there are no shadows. The moon surface thus may appear very flat. Try shooting in a gibbous, quarter, or crescent phase--the shadows bring out a lot of relief on the moon and can make for a much more interesting photo.

Good luck and happy shooting!

Thanks @LordKOTL, yeah I tried the looney 11 rule and set f11, ISO 100 and shutter 100, also f11, 200, 200. Didn't come out any sharper for me than my other combinations.

Thanks @Bill, I've cropped and exported in lightroom, hopefully these images will show the exif data.

@ DavidWright2010, I'm guessing there's noise because I wasn't able to get sharp enough focus in any of my shots and so perhaps any editing will show noise because there isn't enough information in the images?

Here is the same image I posted earlier, but this time completely unedited, just as it looks from the camera. Does this image show why there's noise after editing?


Unedited f8, ISO 100, shutter 1/500th

And here is another I took at f8, ISO 100 with shutter speed 1/100 sec, also unedited.


Unedited f8, ISO 100, shutter 1/100th

Some great advice here. In my experience, there's a combination of properly exposing the image and post-processing the image later. Here are a few tips.

1. The full moon, while really cool, isn't the most interesting. Huh?? I know it seems counter-intuitive, but something less than a full moon generally gives better detail to the features near the edge of the moon. Since it's not fully lit, you get the advantage of shadows that effectively add detail.
2. I strongly recommend manual focus. If the moon is not full, then focusing on the edge of the moon can give you good results.
3. Try shooting both in the waxing (before full moon) and waning (after full moon) phases. There are very interesting shots to be had, and unique features will be more visible throughout these phases.
4. Be sure to observe the 1/focal length shutter speed, or close to it. If you have a crop-frame sensor, remember that it has a 1.5X or 1.6X crop factor. So the long end of you 300mm lens is 450mm or 480mm. Any movement at that focal length will look like an earthquake.
5. If you have software to handle RAW, you'll get the best image when captured RAW. Even in FINE mode, your camera will compress the image and you'll lose detail. When you're dealing with such a small part of the sensor, you can use every bit of detail.
   1. Slightly increase the exposure if the image is too dark.
   2. Slightly decrease the highlights.
   3. Slightly increase the shadows.
   4. Play with Contrast, Sharpening, or Texture to bring out details. For sharpening, be careful as it's easy to exaggerate noise.
6. If you get a chance, find a good 1.4 teleconverter. It's not necessary, but will give you a "larger" moon relative to the frame. Just remember that it increases your focal length, and you do lose one stop of light. I've shot with and without it.

Most of all, enjoy the process. With time and practice, you'll get some amazing shots of our nearest neighbor. =)

DJMusic, great photos.

I shot in manual focus for the ones I posted. I'd love to buy a teleconverter or a 600mm+ lens and get better detail but can't afford them after just buying the gear I now own. I'm definitely going to attempt a waning moon this week if the cloud cover stays away, but I'm in London, shocking for weather! I'll focus on the edge of the moon to try and pick up crater detail.

Yeah, I'm shooting in RAW. I just think my main problem is not getting sharp enough focus as can be seen in my unedited images, and I don't know how to improve that.

Using the LCD screen, I tweaked the focus ring on the Tamron 70-300mm lens to what looked like the most in focus. When I zoom x10 on the screen to focus, the moon shakes around, so I had to steady the camera to reduce the moon shaking all over the place while turning the focus ring. I was on a tripod. Most of the images I took were using the 10 second timer. I found that after half pressing the shutter button to focus, I was able to take the shots with only the mildest press. It felt like I hadn't pressed it enough but it worked. I hoped that would have reduced any vibration. Or maybe it doesn't matter if the camera shakes a bit when pressing the shutter button once it's on a self timer?

Merlin5 said:

Thanks @LordKOTL, yeah I tried the looney 11 rule and set f11, ISO 100 and shutter 100, also f11, 200, 200. Didn't come out any sharper for me than my other combinations.

Thanks @Bill, I've cropped and exported in lightroom, hopefully these images will show the exif data.

@ DavidWright2010, I'm guessing there's noise because I wasn't able to get sharp enough focus in any of my shots and so perhaps any editing will show noise because there isn't enough information in the images?

Here is the same image I posted earlier, but this time completely unedited, just as it looks from the camera. Does this image show why there's noise after editing?


Unedited f8, ISO 100, shutter 1/500th

And here is another I took at f8, ISO 100 with shutter speed 1/100 sec, also unedited.


Unedited f8, ISO 100, shutter 1/100th

Click to expand...

The first is so noisy it's hard to tell anything. The second is much cleaner and looks a bit OOF, also there is some chromatic abberation (at 7 o'clock red and 1 o'clock blue)

You've gotten a lot of advice - mostly good - but I have to disagree with some. Modern lenses are not made to be focused manually; the throw is too short. I always use AF on the Moon (on the limb), and never have focusing issues.

Second, you need to experiment with your lens to find the sweet spot. A blanket rec to stop down 2 stops is a place to start, but with my Sigma 150-600 mm I always shoot wide open:



I also try a long an exposure as possible - on this particular night I was able to use 1/80 sec. That's pretty close to the longest exposure possible without smearing, for 600 mm and and 5 micron pixels. Most nights I need to use a shorter exposure to avoid blur.

Finally, forget about 'effective focal length'. For AP, you need to think about 'pixels across the target'. A 300 mm lens on a crop sensor, or 300 mm on a full frame (with the same pixel size) will give you exactly the same number of pixels across the Moon.

David

Merlin5 said:

Thanks @LordKOTL, yeah I tried the looney 11 rule and set f11, ISO 100 and shutter 100, also f11, 200, 200. Didn't come out any sharper for me than my other combinations.

Thanks @Bill, I've cropped and exported in lightroom, hopefully these images will show the exif data.

@ DavidWright2010, I'm guessing there's noise because I wasn't able to get sharp enough focus in any of my shots and so perhaps any editing will show noise because there isn't enough information in the images?

Here is the same image I posted earlier, but this time completely unedited, just as it looks from the camera. Does this image show why there's noise after editing?


Unedited f8, ISO 100, shutter 1/500th

And here is another I took at f8, ISO 100 with shutter speed 1/100 sec, also unedited.


Unedited f8, ISO 100, shutter 1/100th

Click to expand...

How high was the Moon when you took these? Looking at the right edge of the Moon in the second shot, those distortions from circular may be turbulance from shooting the Moon near the horizon.

David

Thanks David. Frankly, I think all 90 shots I took are out of focus. I'm doing something wrong. Or maybe my lens needs a clean. As far as moon height, umm, I guess maybe 60 to 70 degree angle from where I was? I didn't have to move my head up too much. Might get another chance tonight, skies are looking clear. I'll try just AF and experiment with shutter speeds 1/80 to to 1/320.

Merlin5 said:

Thanks @LordKOTL, yeah I tried the looney 11 rule and set f11, ISO 100 and shutter 100, also f11, 200, 200. Didn't come out any sharper for me than my other combinations.

...

Click to expand...

Hmmm...as others have said: Have you tried looking up the "sweet spot" of that lens? I believe you're shooting FF so f/11 shouldn't be diffraction limited. My 200-500 is sharp at both f/5.6 and f/8--so that's where I usually shoot.

Also, what DavidWright2010 said:

Merlin5 said:

You've gotten a lot of advice - mostly good - but I have to disagree with some. Modern lenses are not made to be focused manually; the throw is too short. I always use AF on the Moon (on the limb), and never have focusing issues.

Click to expand...

I agree with: His "using AF on the limb" method. It has worked wonders for me when shooting the moon and sun (with a proper solar filter for the sun, of course). I would highly recommend this method since there is a ton of contrast on the moon's limb--and Phase-Detect Auto Focus (PDAF) should have no trouble with this. However, if you're going to manual focus, I've found using live view, zooming to 100% and then manual focusing until everything is sharp also works really well for astrophotography. I tend to not use it on the moon since PDAF works so well.

Have you checked your lens' AF calibration? Does it work when you're shooting at 300mm or is it soft as well?

Merlin5 said:

Thanks David, glad I did ok! That's amazing what you just did to my second image. I can see how you've removed the grain from the darker patches of the moon. Yes it pops more now, you've struck a good balance between my darker one which looks a bit flat and my brighter one which lacks contrast. You're very good at post processing.

Click to expand...

No problem. Happy to help

To be honest, I post edit all my photos, well keepers at least. I shoot raw and it is virtually impossible for me to get a good close-up photo of the moon sooc.

Merlin5 said:

I had tried auto ISO but it put it to 400 and was over exposed. But I can't remember what my aperture and shutter speed was, they might have already been letting too much light in.

Click to expand...

I use my camera's histogram in Liveview and/or in camera preview to check if there is any clipping of the moon. As long as there is no clipping, you should be able to easily adjust the brightness/lightness of the moon to suit in post, especially if shooting raw.

If you are shooting jpegs, it's best to get the look you want in-camera as recovering highlights can be much more problematic in post.

Merlin5 said:

Regarding moon phases and harsh lighting, yes, I'm hoping to get a waning moon shot at the weekend, I'm keeping my eye on this moon calendar

https://moonphases.co.uk/moon-calendar

Do you know why my exif data doesn't show when hovering over my photos?

Click to expand...

That means for some reason it was either stripped out of file when you saved it or maybe maybe the DPR website doesn't display exif data in png files. I suspect that maybe when you saved the image from Paint 3D, any exif data was stripped out.

Merlin5 said:

I shot in raw, edited and exported from lightroom as a tiff file and then cropped in paint 3D and saved as a png file.

Click to expand...

I'm sure Lightroom can crop images, so maybe crop in LR and make sure you select the correct options to include exif data when saving to a jpeg for web display.

David1961 said:

Merlin5 said:

Thanks David, glad I did ok! That's amazing what you just did to my second image. I can see how you've removed the grain from the darker patches of the moon. Yes it pops more now, you've struck a good balance between my darker one which looks a bit flat and my brighter one which lacks contrast. You're very good at post processing.

Click to expand...

No problem. Happy to help

To be honest, I post edit all my photos, well keepers at least. I shoot raw and it is virtually impossible for me to get a good close-up photo of the moon sooc.

David1961 said:

I had tried auto ISO but it put it to 400 and was over exposed. But I can't remember what my aperture and shutter speed was, they might have already been letting too much light in.

Click to expand...

I use my camera's histogram in Liveview and/or in camera preview to check if there is any clipping of the moon. As long as there is no clipping, you should be able to easily adjust the brightness/lightness of the moon to suit in post, especially if shooting raw.

If you are shooting jpegs, it's best to get the look you want in-camera as recovering highlights can be much more problematic in post.

David1961 said:

Regarding moon phases and harsh lighting, yes, I'm hoping to get a waning moon shot at the weekend, I'm keeping my eye on this moon calendar

https://moonphases.co.uk/moon-calendar

Do you know why my exif data doesn't show when hovering over my photos?

Click to expand...

That means for some reason it was either stripped out of file when you saved it or maybe maybe the DPR website doesn't display exif data in png files. I suspect that maybe when you saved the image from Paint 3D, any exif data was stripped out.

David1961 said:

I shot in raw, edited and exported from lightroom as a tiff file and then cropped in paint 3D and saved as a png file.

Click to expand...

I'm sure Lightroom can crop images, so maybe crop in LR and make sure you select the correct options to include exif data when saving to a jpeg for web display.

Click to expand...

In Photoshop Elements, “save for web” strips off the exif. Just plain “save as” doesn’t .

another David

DavidWright2010 said:

In Photoshop Elements, “save for web” strips off the exif. Just plain “save as” doesn’t .

Click to expand...

I am a long time user of PSE and yes that is correct but there is a little more to it as well.

"Save For Web" does give you the option to embed the colour profile or not.

If you choose to embed the colour profile, and everyone concerned about colour management should, it will embed the sRGB colour space regardless of what working colour space you used to create the image.

I use AdobeRGB as my working colour space, so I convert an image to sRGB prior to using "Save For Web".

"Save as" gives you the option to embed the working colour space you used to create the image into the jpeg.

David1961 said:

DavidWright2010 said:

In Photoshop Elements, “save for web” strips off the exif. Just plain “save as” doesn’t .

Click to expand...

I am a long time user of PSE and yes that is correct but there is a little more to it as well.

"Save For Web" does give you the option to embed the colour profile or not.

If you choose to embed the colour profile, and everyone concerned about colour management should, it will embed the sRGB colour space regardless of what working colour space you used to create the image.

I use AdobeRGB as my working colour space, so I convert an image to sRGB prior to using "Save For Web".

"Save as" gives you the option to embed the working colour space you used to create the image into the jpeg.

Click to expand...

Ok.

I never use adobeRGB, so I never had a need for “save for web”.

thanks for explaining that.

David

Ah, London! Fond memories of a visit there pre-children. =)

One thing to try is hanging something from the center column. This helps even with my substantial Benro tripod. Tripods are great, but it helps to give them a firm connection to the ground.

happy shooting!

The simplest way to shoot the moon is to change your cameras metering to spot metering. The moon is very bright on a black backdrop, you don't want to be metering for the whole sky when the only object will be the moon. This will also help if you're in live view and trying to manually focus (which I don't do, I use the "limb" method of picking and edge of the moon for the camera to focus on.

Another issue is some lenses just struggle with focusing against a strong backlight which is what you're essentially doing.

I have never had any issues when using spot metering. You can even put the camera on Shutter priority, or aperture priority and get a perfect shot because it'll be metered correctly. At least you can start there and continue practicing with manually changing all the settings (but look at the settings the camera is telling you that it's picking when using one of the semi-auto modes (S/Tv and A/Av), that should be your base of where to start, then make small adjustments from there).

DavidWright2010 said:

David1961 said:

DavidWright2010 said:

In Photoshop Elements, “save for web” strips off the exif. Just plain “save as” doesn’t .

Click to expand...

I am a long time user of PSE and yes that is correct but there is a little more to it as well.

"Save For Web" does give you the option to embed the colour profile or not.

If you choose to embed the colour profile, and everyone concerned about colour management should, it will embed the sRGB colour space regardless of what working colour space you used to create the image.

I use AdobeRGB as my working colour space, so I convert an image to sRGB prior to using "Save For Web".

"Save as" gives you the option to embed the working colour space you used to create the image into the jpeg.

Click to expand...

Ok.

I never use adobeRGB, so I never had a need for “save for web”.

thanks for explaining that.

David

Click to expand...

Lightroom doesn't have a save function. The OP had exported the edited RAF from LR as a TIFF, opened and cropped the TIFF in Paint, and saved the Paint file as a JPEG. On the second pass, he exported the fully processed image from LR as a JPEG with metadata included.

Kobie M-C said:

... Another issue is some lenses just struggle with focusing against a strong backlight which is what you're essentially doing.

Click to expand...

A full moon is not backlit. The moon is being lit by the sun infront of it. If the moon was backlit, the face of the moon we see would be in shadow.