6 moon photography tips for beginners.
6 moon photography tips for beginnners.
Moon setting over Dovrefjell national park
1.Use a DSLR or mirorless camera.
This is important because you need to have controll over your camera settings.
2.Use a telephoto lens.
To photograph the moon and get details in the moon you need to use a telephoto lens. From 200mm and upwards works fine. You can find afordable telephoto lenses from third party manufacturers like Tamaron, Sigma etc, also chek out ebay or Finn.no for good deals( i bought most of my photo equipment second hand)
Minolta f.2.8.200mm bought on Ebay for 200euro/2000nok. Look for second hand equipment especially if you are starting your moon photo journy and don`t want to break the bank or sell your house to buy the latest and greatest.
A tele converter extends the reach of your lens and is often a cheaper alternative to zoom lenses.
3.Use manual settings.
The moon reflects the light from the sun and is incredibly bright. This is hard for your camera to handle,since the landscape around the moon is usually darker. If you want to shot detailed moon photos in the dark.Start with f.11 and iso 100 at 1/100 sec, and adjust iso and shutter til you get a good exposure of the moon. If you are shoting the moon in the dark , you should also set your focus to manual. To Get good focus in manual focus, turn the focus ring on your lens until the moon is in focus.( this can be a bit dificult but keep trying and you will get it)
Shot with the sony a68 and a over 20 year old Minolta telephoto lens. You don`t need the most expensive equipment to get detailed moon photos. Exif/ setting: 1/500 sec f.6.3 iso 500 at 400mm focal length.
4.Use a Tripod.
Using a Tripod will keep your camera stabel and give you sharper photos.
Pink sunset with the moon rising. Setting/exif: 1\640 sec f.8 iso 100
5.Shot the rising or setting moon.
To get a photo of the moon rising over a mountain or building is in my opinion the ultimat way to shot the moon. During every full moon the moon rises when the sun sets and sets when the sun rises. This makes it possible to photograph the moon with som beautiful light conditions and a different aproach to exposure and focus. This type of moon photography requires som planing and i recomend to chek out a app called PhotoPills to see where the moon will be setting and rising. I will go into detail on landscape moon photography in a later blog, so stay tuned.
for this shot i used autofocus (adjustable spot focus )with the focus point on the moon,to get the moon in focus and the blury forground.Framing the moon rise. Exif\ settings: 1/320 f.8 iso 320 at 200mm.
Includ forground elements to give the photo depth.
6.Shot your photos in RAW
shoting your photos in RAW will give you much more room to recover details and adjust your photos in a photo editing app or softwear.Since raw is basically a digital negative and contains much more information than a JPG .
Settings/exif: 1/125 sec f.11 iso 100 at 400mm. A little edit in lightroom where i took down the highlights to recover details in the moon and raised the shadows to recover som details in forground.
Hope this was usefull and that you will go out and practise moon photography. If you want to connect on VERO , tap the link icon box below. Thanks for reading🙏