Shooting the Moon
The moon is the most familiar heavenly body in the night sky, but getting good images of our closest celestial neighbour requires a different method of shooting than distant stars
The moon can be our worst enemy in many types of astrophotography shots, washing out our Milky Way or star trails images, or becoming a hindrance to our aurora-filled skies by flooding the landscape of snow with light and preventing us from being able to capture the full aurora. That said, a good photo of or with the moon can be exquisite.
The most important thing to consider, when shooting the moon, is just how bright it is. The moon is a tricky subject. It will easily be clipped because it’s literally reflecting the light from the sun, however it isn’t bright enough to simply take a snapshot.
We can usually overcome this by bracketing our exposures and creating an HDR image in post. Doing this with our Nikon camera is as simple as using the BKT button on more advanced DSLRS, or manually shooting a series of over and underexposed images while using a tripod.
Steady on
We need to use our rock-steady tripod as we have with all other astrophotography, but when shooting the moon our exposure settings are different. Our ISO for Milky Way, aurora and star trails was pushed up, but for the moon, we want to be shooting at our camera’s base ISO to have the absolute minimal noise in the darker areas surrounding the moon. This is usually ISO100 for Nikon cameras, but could be ISO64-200 – check your camera manual to be sure.
Secondly, our aperture should be a lot smaller than with previous subjects. We’re looking to achieve a clean, sharp shot of the moon. This means we should be shooting at the sweet spot of our lens, which is usually around f/8. From here we can shoot at around 1/100 sec, depending on the brightness of the moon. When we zoom in tight to the moon with a long lens, we need our tripod, despite using a shutter speed that is in the fractions of a second rather than in seconds, because we want to preserve as much detail as possible.
The moon will easily be clipped because it’s literally reflecting the light from the sun, but it isn’t bright enough to take a snapshot
Moon shot
Planning is our friend here, particularly when it comes to knowing where and when we will see the moon. I like to incorporate the moon as part of a larger scene, offering a sense of perspective and scale. This is where our planning is so important –
knowing where the moon will be in relation to the larger scene will make or break the shot. While a good photo of the moon all alone can be a great shot, applying the photographic principles of composition that we know can result in an equally compelling image, placing the moon as the clear subject of the shot on a rule-of-thirds intersection, for example, or demonstrating depth with a good foreground and background to the scene. This all falls to personal taste, of course, but let’s explore night-time landscapes in a little more detail.
Shooting a landscape at night is just like shooting a landscape during the day… but different! There are important elements of landscape photography that translate to shooting a landscape at night, including the use of depth to offer distinct foreground, middle-ground and background layers to attract the viewer into the scene. It’s also a great idea to include a subject in the scene for the same reason – it engages the viewer.
Adding this interest will enhance our photo and the sky will serve to create even more of a hook to anyone that sees it. But what is the difference between a night landscape and the other types of photography we’ve discussed so far?
Well, in the other types of photography we’ve talked about the sky itself being the main subject of the shot whereas with night landscapes it’s more about the scenery underneath the starry sky. The emphasis is on the landscape and the sky should be the secondary consideration, but still play an important part in your shooting.
Dancing in the moonlight
The thing that makes this difficult is the available natural light that spills onto the landscape. When we have no moon, we have no landscape. At the other end of the scale, a full moon can overexpose the landscape, particularly in a snowy, winter scene. Knowing what we now know about the 500-rule and star trails translates to having to use a shutter speed that’s just right. If you set it for too long then our stars will blur, too short and our landscape will have a narrow focal plane.
Operating right on the fringes of night can be in our interests for night landscapes, using the light available during nautical and astronomical twilight along with their presence of stars to create some interesting and dramatic photos. These twilight
Advances made in Nikon sensors means we’re having to deal with noise far less than before
times occur before dawn and after dusk at the times where we still have the feel of blue hour, but also have stars and other celestial bodies in the sky.
Night and day
The key to great night landscapes truly lies in translating our daytime landscape knowledge and applying it in the dark, elongating our exposure times and considering the subject of the shot. Having a great foreground with the aurora dancing overhead demonstrates that we’ve acted to create the shot, almost placing the aurora as an afterthought to creating a great landscape shot that’s rarely seen. As with all types of photography, practice makes perfect. It’s a great idea to get out in our local area or favourite spots at night, shooting landscapes we’ve shot before, only this time in the dark. This will soon help our understanding of the way the light works in changing circumstances and during different moon phases before we venture farther afield to apply our skills.
Night-time photography overall is a very rewarding genre of photography and it can deliver some spectacular results. The advances made in Nikon sensors means we’re having to deal with noise far less than before. I would urge anyone to give astrophotography or night landscape photography a try.