Moon pic

[vincent-poon]

Heres my shot from the last Eclipse.


1 sec exposure
F4.0 @280mm
ISO 800.

This was the best of many different exposures for me.

Also:

why such high iso? I thought we need to use low iso for this type of pics. Also, i found out most people use high aperture with a low shutter speed for the moon, but then the pics come out too dark, is this the reason for the high iso?

[WillFi]

why such high iso? I thought we need to use low iso for this type of pics. Also, i found out most people use high aperture with a low shutter speed for the moon, but then the pics come out too dark, is this the reason for the high iso?

This was a Lunar Eclipse. The brightness is very low as you can tell by the 1 second shutter at F4.0 @iso800.

If I were to use iso100 I would need to have a 8 second shutter for the same exposure, which in turn would cause the moon to blur with no detail at all - the moon travels quite fast in the sky!

[goofball]

why such high iso? I thought we need to use low iso for this type of pics. Also, i found out most people use high aperture with a low shutter speed for the moon, but then the pics come out too dark, is this the reason for the high iso?

You use whatever ISO allows you to get the picture. As such, a 1sec exposure is pretty long and close to the limit, the earth is constantly moving and as a result, the moon is not in a static location for long.

As for why your pics come out dark, it depends on if you're using the proper metering mode and accounting for the fact that you're shooting an almost white object. You may need to overexpose by 1/3-2/3 stop or dial in + EV. Remember that camera's don't really understand "white", they try to make everything "neutral grey". The aperture and shutter are set accordingly. I normally try to stay f/8-f/11 and don't like to go slower than 1 sec shutter.

[vincent-poon]

Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 55.0mm (35mm equivalent: 82mm)
Exposure Time: 1.300 s
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO equiv: 200
White Balance: Auto
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: Manual
Exposure Mode: Manual
Comment: POON

so lets say i have these settings and trying to take a moon pic with clouds as the background, i would need to lower the exposure time, lower the aperture, as well as over expose.

[WillFi]

so lets say i have these settings and trying to take a moon pic with clouds as the background, i would need to lower the exposure time, lower the aperture, as well as over expose.

Your have a limited Dynamic Range in a Photograph. You can't have the Moon exposed properly and the clouds exposed well in one scene. Taking multiple exposures and creating a HDR would give this image though.

[goofball]

so lets say i have these settings and trying to take a moon pic with clouds as the background, i would need to lower the exposure time, lower the aperture, as well as over expose.

You would need to lower the exposure time (as in, faster shutter speed), not necessarily lower the aperture since you're not really zoomed in all that close, and overexpose but you should be using spot to expose just the moon to get a more accurate meter reading and then deciding on how much to overexpose to get a white moon as opposed to a dark grey moon.

As mentioned though, you can't have it all in one shot. You'll need multiple shots and merge them to get the clouds as visible as you want them without having a blown out moon.