How to photograph the moon with DSLR

Hello Good people,

One of the things I always admire since my childhood is that white little coin that appears in the sky at night, which becomes smaller and smaller and suddenly disappears. Back then, I always thought it would be very easy to take a photo of the moon. Although I never tried even once then.

Now that I got myself a DSLR camera, and a decent enough zoom to support it, I was more than interested in clicking a few pictures of the moon. Only then I found out that it is not as simple as it looks like.

To begin with, this is how a moon appears in your dslr camera when you click it in the normal way. This could be due to several reasons.

 

 

Right, so what are the setting required to be made ? Let's look at some basic questions that would come out, first.

 



Firstly, I see a bigger moon in the sky, but when I take a picture, I see a smaller image. Why ? You would have been using a wide angle lens that covers plenty of space on screen where the moon is made to look smaller. Try to use zooming lens like a 300mm or 400mm, and you would definitely see a larger image.

 

In the above picture, you just see a white circle , but in reality the moon looks a lot different. How come ?

That is because the moon was over exposed, and it is very common during the night. We can cover it up using the setting discussed below.

 

Ok, so what are the settings required ?

 

Firstly, put the camera into "Manual" mode.. this is the tougher option in the camera, but you can play around with it very well.

 

Then increase the ISO to 200 or 400 depending on the light availability. More dark it is more you will want to increase the ISO.

 

Set the aperture level to f/11. Smaller aperture levels will soften the image and larger aperture levels will reduce the shutter speed. Shutter speed is very important, because the moon keeps moving at a good speed and higher shutter speed helps in capturing more sharper images. I would suggest to stay above 1/125.

 

These are the main settings that are required and one can play around with the numbers to get a suitable combination. So, after applying these settings, below is how the moon looked.. (the above moon, on the same day, after a few hours)

 

 

 

And here is another, taken 19 days later..

 

 

 



Just to let you know, these are all raw pictures. I haven't yet tried using adobe photoshop elements.

 

And the below one again is a sepia kind of an image with extra lighting..

 

 

 

So, you can see, you can indeed click a variety of shots of the moon once you understand the technicalities behind it. A little bit of physics involved.. but this is much better than the physics that we all had at school.

 

 

Below is a picture that I tried during the day time, that is, before sunset. This is a bit easier as there is adequate lighting.

 



 

 

I must admit I did do lot of researches in google, reading photography related blogs and articles. this happened between the first and second photo on this blog, and you already see a good enough difference.

 

One of the blogs that helped me a lot and gave a lot of information about moon photograph was from Mr. Nasim Mansurov. Here is the link to his blog : http://photographylife.com/how-to-photograph-moon

 

I haven't however, yet, tried to take photo of the moon with foreground objects like a landscape or buildings etc., I'm yet to find a good enough location for that.

 

Nonetheless, It's always a good feeling to see the moon, and even more, to take photo of the moon.

 

Now then, imagine about keeping a foot on the moon..  And this is what Mr. Neil Armstrong had to say after landing on the moon

 

"That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind"

 

 

Rightly so..!

 

It's been 3 months that Mr. Neil Armstrong passed way.. and I would like to dedicate this blog to him.. RIP.