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Digital Shots at Night I had the white balance on auto also. The picture came out too bright with the flash and too dark without. Both ways produced a glare off the moon.
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John A. Lind |
Scar, Your basic problem is not related to camera settings. It's the enormous difference between the brightness of the moon and the brightness level of the night landscape. The moon is directly illuminated by the sun, and it has about the same brightness level of things on earth with direct illumination from the sun during the day with a clear sky (no clouds). Several issues can cause the "glare" you mention (actual term for the "halo" around the moon in the photo you uploaded is "flare"). From most to least likely: Regarding your usage of flash . . . outdoors at night, light from a flash dissipates very rapidly with distance from the flash and doesn't have that much range. It falls off with the inverse square of the distance. The amount of illumination at 20 feet is 1/4th that compared to illumination at 10 feet. At 30 feet it's 1/9th the illumination at 10 feet. First, forget about trying to use a flash in photographs like this. The one thing I can think of that would help the extreme brightness difference is a graduated neutral density filter. Neutral density filters are a neutral gray that won't affect color balance. A graduated filter is darker in one half compared to the other half and the transition between the two halves is gradual. The lens mount on a "grad" filter also allows turning it so you can orient it to put the darker and lighter halves where you want them in the image. In this case, the darker half would be oriented for the sky portion of the photograph to cut down the brightness of the moon compared to the rest of the scene which would be capture through the lighter portion of the filter. An ND-grad filter is most often used just before sunrise and just after sunset when detail and saturation in both sky and ground are desired. In these situations, illumination of the ground is dim with the sky still comparatively very bright, and the difference between the two is too much to capture detail in both . . . the sky will blow out with very little color saturation, or ground detail will be lost as one deep sihlouette-like shadow. You have a similar situation in a middle of the night version with sky brightness confined to the moon's disc, not the entire sky. -- John
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Jon Close |
Lots of good advice from John, as always. I disagree, though, with the comment, "First, forget about trying to use a flash in photographs like this." I like how the flash has illuminated the foreground trees in this picture (though maybe the too-bright grass could be cropped out). But the moon is extremely overexposed. I'd suggest trying this again with flash (to highlight the foreground trees), and manually set the ISO to 100 and the shutter and aperture to 1/125 (or whatever the max flash sync is on your camera) and f/8 to properly expose the full moon.
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Darwin A. Mulligan |
Ever hear of the sunny 16 rule? To photograph a full moon (and get detail), you would use the "moony 8" rule. This simply means at 100ISO, you would shoot at f8 at 1/125 sec. Bracket maybe 1/2 or 1 stop for insurance. If you want the moon and your landscape to be shot at the same time, you must balance the night sky and the landscape lighting values (the sky should be 1 stop brighter than the landscape). Of course, you can photograph the moon by itself and composite it into your night-time image Regards Darwin
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John A. Lind |
Regarding flash: I can accept that use of flash . . . or not using it . . . depends on the photographer's vision for the photograph. You're correct that "forget about using one" is a bit strong. Understanding what it can and cannot do is what's important. A flash certainly could be used light up the nearby trees. The tradeoff is accepting that the more distant background behind them, other than the moon's disk, will be totally black. IOW, it cannot light up the landscape evenly from near to far. Light from flash dissipates even more outdoors with near nothing to bounce at least some light back into the scene being photographed. As a result, the effect of light falloff with distance from flash is more noticeable. Regarding the moon: This will create a mid-tone moon and is straight from Kodak Technical Publication P150. Many want it brighter as that is how we perceive it against a dark sky. To do this, add one stop more to all the exposure guidelines (e.g., for full moon use an "f/11" rule). Want it brighter yet with some loss of highlight detail? Use Darwin's f/8 rule and open up one more stop. I'm not saying this is wrong, it's a matter of what you want the moon to look like. Keep exposure time as short as practical. IIRC, over about 1/8th or 1/15th second and the moon's details can begin to blur from a combination of earth rotation and moon orbital motion. Too long an exposure will produce a nice streak with a slight curve to it. Exact limit before motion blur sets in depends on focal length. The risk is greatest with long telephoto lenses. Moonscapes: If using film, be certain to read the film data sheet and adjust *this* exposure time to compensate for reciprocity failure. Something other than full moon? Got something other than clear sky? Estimate how many stops to open up to compensate for this as you would for the same type of cloud cover obscuring the sun. Bracket exposure if possible!! Why 86400/(film speed) @ f/4 for exposure? The sun is about 1.4 million times the brightness of a full moon. 1.4 million divided by 86400, the number of seconds in a day, is approximately 16. Opening up a lens from f/16 to f/4 allows in 16X the amount of light. Last, but not least . . . with a standard focal length (50mm lens with 35mm camera) . . . expect "star trails" when exposure exceeds about 30-45 seconds. These are cause by the earth's rotation. Longer focal lengths will show star trails sooner (shorter exposures) and shorter focal lengths will tolerate longer exposures before star trails occur. -- John
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- Usman M. Bajwa![]() Contact Usman M. Bajwa Usman M. Bajwa's Gallery |
Great thread and insight on capturing the moon, John. Are you still around? UB.
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