# Photo of the Moon



## WilliamH

I'm a newbie when it comes to taking pictures.

I bought a Nikon P510 in December. This camera has a great zoom!! 

I need some pointers. I'm trying to get a good clear shot of the moon but I'm not sure of what settings I should be using. Any suggestions?

Here is my best attempt from last night.


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## Pocketfisherman

Here's one I took Saturday night in Austin with a Canon 5DMKIII and a Canon 100-400L lens.

Suggest you use your camera's manual mode. Stop down the lens to F8 which will help with sharpnes, use a shutter speed of 1/160-1/300 to eliminate the motion blur, it's moving fast relative to the earth. And set your ISO to get the right exposure without clipping the highlights (brightest areas), use your Camera's histogram to assess the exposure. I usually use ISO 200 or 400. Then with your post processing SW, bump up the contrast and saturation a bit.


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## Pocketfisherman

And absolutely use a tripod, or bag of rice, or something to hold the camera steady and use the self timer or remote cable release to trip the shutter so that your hand does not shake the camera.


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## WilliamH

That is awesome!! Thanks for the tips.


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## Law Dog

Both are awesome looking pics!


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## stargazer

Dang Bill, great job on giving us the moon :tongue::biggrin:Fantastic detail...



Pocketfisherman said:


> Here's one I took Saturday night in Austin with a Canon 5DMKIII and a Canon 100-400L lens.
> 
> Suggest you use your camera's manual mode. Stop down the lens to F8 which will help with sharpnes, use a shutter speed of 1/160-1/300 to eliminate the motion blur, it's moving fast relative to the earth. And set your ISO to get the right exposure without clipping the highlights (brightest areas), use your Camera's histogram to assess the exposure. I usually use ISO 200 or 400. Then with your post processing SW, bump up the contrast and saturation a bit.


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## WilliamH

I tried again last night. Still learning.

These were hand held, I need to buy a tripod.


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## WilliamH

I don't know what happened here but it looks like a got a shot of a ufo!!


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## Slip

Pocketfisherman said:


> Here's one I took Saturday night in Austin with a Canon 5DMKIII and a Canon 100-400L lens.
> 
> Suggest you use your camera's manual mode. Stop down the lens to F8 which will help with sharpnes, use a shutter speed of 1/160-1/300 to eliminate the motion blur, it's moving fast relative to the earth. And set your ISO to get the right exposure without clipping the highlights (brightest areas), use your Camera's histogram to assess the exposure. I usually use ISO 200 or 400. Then with your post processing SW, bump up the contrast and saturation a bit.


Love your moon shots. I have tried to reproduce just a fraction of your results with much less than satisfactory results. I have teh Canon 5DMKIII with the Canon 100-400L lens and tried some last night with many different settings that started as you suggest above but no where near your results. My processing is no where close to your results. Sorry and not trying to compete, however, trying to get better but looks like a long way to go. Any suggestions from my results?


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## Slip

Ok, my latest attempt which I can see is still a long way off. I would have thought it was pretty good until I compare with the one from PocketFisherman here. I love the one above from PF above. Will keep trying. I took a ton last night at all kinds of settings and this was a result of the best of those.


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## MT Stringer

Just remember the moon is lit by the sun. Sorta like shooting in the backyard on a sunny afternoon.

A good tripod, a cable release and manual focusing help.

Shoot in manual exposure.

Set your ISO at 200-400. F stop at f/8, and a shutter speed of 1/320 to start with. Shoot several shots and check your results.

Increase or decrease either your shutter speed or ISO to get your exposure right. Leave the lens at f/8. Check your focus often.

Film is cheep these days so shoot-a-lot! 

Example below
ISO: 400
S/S: 1/250
F/stop: f/6.3

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 300 f/2.8 + 2x
Focal Length: 600mm


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## Pocketfisherman

Slip Knot, Those look pretty good. The only thing I would do difference in processing is a levels adjustment to bring the highlights up a bit until you just see clipping, and then adjust the midpoint until it looks best to your eye. When you focus, use the live view focus (Not quick focus) as it uses contrast detect vs phase detect, and is usually sharper. I've also got good results with the 100-400 by shooting at about 350mm, it's sharper there, turn off IS, turn on silent shooting mode to eliminate mirror slap vibrations. You can also use live view and zoom in on the edge of the moon near a dark corner to focus manually and get the best definition on the crater rims. Use a remote shutter release or self timer. Lastly, 5DIII raw files can take quite a bit of sharpening. If you use PS or LR, sharpen with a radius of 1.2-1.3, sharpening amount of 25-45 and adjust the masking up high. Hold down the shift-option (Ctrl-Shft) keys while adjust masking to sharpen just the edges which is typically a mask value up around 75-85.

MT - Super nice!


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## Danny O

Awesome moon pics! Thanks guys!


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## Slip

Thanks guys, gonna try some more tonight. I have been using the Live Mode as well as turned off the IS as well as tried manual and auto focus. Have a hard time with manual focus since 400 mm still is hard to see good enough to focus, but the manuals were pretty good on focus. I will try the 350 vs 400 to see if it helps and will also try a mirror lockup to see if it also helps? Advisable or not? It is supposed to prevent mirror shake.

I shoot raw and use photoshop raw and full photoshop for processing, so will take your advise on the processing also. Thanks for all help. My wife loved my moon until I showed her yours  and agree, both of you have done a great job.thanks for sharing your sucesses. I will advise on how it goes. I took close to a hundred shots last night but the one shown was the best of them all with adjustments to improve some also. I did tons of different settings in those shots. The moon is getting later and later coming up to best photo shooting. 

I do have a 2x also, but is seemed softer when using it the night before last.


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## Pocketfisherman

Yeah, Mirror lockup and silent shooting both do the same thing with the mirror. Mirror lockup is probably better since you use two separate shutter presses to initiate and have more time delay, especially with the self timer vs remote release.


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## Slip

Ok, gonna give it a whirl. Never used the mirror lock before, but use silent often when out in the marsh waiting on ducks and in the duck blind taking duck shots. Will let you know how it goes and hope to see some improvement.


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## Slip

Took many more tonight and believe I show some improvement in detail than prior versions. Tweeking on adjustments based on suggestions from Pocketfisherman and help also from MT Stringer. Thanks guys, not there yet, but much closer than the last two days attempts. Still always welcome any suggestions.....any at all!!! It still doesn't pop like I want it, but closer to getting there thanks to the help from here.

I can see the mirror lockup, 350 focal length zoom vs 400 seemed to helps somewhat. 
Camera: Canon 5D MKIII
ISO: 200
S/S: 1/160
F/stop: f/8
Focal Length: 350mm


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## Pocketfisherman

That looks really good. One more thing to try, bump the ISO up to 400 since the 5DIII has really low noise at that speed. Then increase the shutter speed to 1/320 to keep the same effective exposure as what you have here. That should give you a bit more sharpness.


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## Slip

I will look closer as I have a few at those settings as well. Will look at hem closer to see ifit is different from above. I really appreciate the help from here on this.


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## The Machine

Good stuff


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## Slip

Tried to mimick what I had here withpoor resultslast night of full moon. Not even eclipse, but full moon. Need to practice again as I seemed to regress.


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## griz

The 400 makes nice moon shots. Lock up your mirror and use mode 2 silent shooting on the Canon's that have it.

Griz


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## Slip

Thanks, mirror was locked and silent. Tried tons of different settings of ISO, F stop and speeds. Still, needs improvement and no where near as good as earlier version here. Lost my touch.....


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## griz

*Scud*

There is always some low flying thin clouds. Usually called scud floating around. So I don't use f11 as it makes the exposure slower and doesn't freeze things as well. You can gauge the scud by looking at the stars. If they are twinkling a lot its not a good time to shoot. Or you will have to speed up things to freeze it. Full moon is hardest to get right. Much easier when its not full to keep things from being blown out. And you get the added features along the dark line. I wanted to do a panorama with all the phases of the eclipse but none of the stuff I needed for my rig has come in yet. Three tries to order a polar scope. I finally got one shipped yesterday. Wedge came in yesterday but I still have to fabricate a plate for my rig for it. Its actually made for an Astrotrac system. Cobbled up a laptop bench with some parts left over from building my video rig. So after the usual 1 week delay for rain when you buy anything that requires decent weather I should be up and running. I've seen some pretty fantastic pics taken with DLSR's on Astrobin.com Personally after using DLSR's and purpose built astro cameras DLSR wins hands down. No filter wheels autoguiders or anything like that to mess with. 3-5 minute exposures will capture most stuff out there. Not that hard to get goodtracking for 3-5 minutes. Especially with a mount that can handle 25 more lbs than I am putting on it. Sure wish I still had my dome though. Setting up is a pain.

Griz


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## Arlon

Zoom and steady rest are helpful. Full moons are the hardest because there are no shadows and it just looks flat. I prefer a day or two past full.


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## Slip

Thanks Arlon. Gonna try other days as my full moons seem flatter lately.


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## griz

Lots of people say to use f10 or f11 for moon shots. I tend to use f8 to make the exposure faster which will freeze any atmosphere movement that might blur your photo. I tend to shoot the moon when its not full. Much more detail and easier to keep things from blowing out. Along the dark limb you will see lots of cool stuff. Instead of using a sharpening filter try a multi level contrast adjustment filter like topaz detail. The eye sees contrast as sharpness but without the artifacts sharpening filters add.










Griz


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