Moonlight photography

It might be a quarter of a million miles away, but our moon is a pretty capable reflector of the sun's rays – at least it is during a full moon. On a clear night, moonlight is strong enough to cast shadows and it is definitely worth having a go shooting scenes with it. In this example, we are talking about shooting by its reflected light than direct shots of the moon's disk. In the latter instance, quite short exposures like those you would use in daylight need to be used if you want detail in the moon's disk. Remember, the moon receives roughly the same amount of light as we do here on earth.

We are off to the coast for this tutorial.


Gear
A DSLR with whatever lenses you favour is essential and ideally your camera will have shutter speeds to 30secs. The B (bulb) setting will come in handy too and you will need a lockable remote release to keep the shutter open. You can count 'one elephant, two elephants etc' to time your long exposures but you are better off using a stopwatch for more accurate and repeatable timing. Some cameras and top-end remote releases let you set timed B exposures and that makes life easier still.

Every DSLR has integral noise reduction of some sort, but it might not be worth using. It works by shooting a 'dark frame' that helps the camera locate noise and then internal processing works to minimize it. However, the downside of such systems is that it 'locks' up the camera for the same amount of time as the exposure itself. Canon has an automatic system that is much quicker.

Moe to the point, with many cameras the benefit of noise reduction is limited and may not even be discernible at modest print sizes. Try it on a convenient night scene before you try it on location.

There are software plug-ins that give even more control, but do not use high settings because crisp details can suffer.

Night scenes make it obvious if you have any 'stuck' pixels. These are the red, green or blue pixels in the CCD or CMOS sensor that no longer functioning correctly and in a night scene appear as tiny, tiny specks of red, blue or green. They are easy to identify and clone out.

Technique
Of course, you need a moon in the first place so keep and eye on the weather forecast. For moonrise/moonset times, try ROE or time and date.

A full moon on a good night is bright enough to cast shadow s and your camera at ISO 400 will give decent results. Try one of the automatic modes and see how the camera copes. You might be surprised. Use the exposure compensation feature to fine-tune exposure and if you are still not happy, try shooting with the B setting.

Focusing can be challenge because it is so dark so take along a powerful torch to light up the subject to help you focus, whether you are focusing manually or using the autofocus system.

It is best not to use the camera monitor to assess exposure because often the image may look very dark and lack contrast. Expect to do some work during Raw processing or Levels or Curves tweaking in Photoshop.

As for white-balance, this is for you to try different settings. Auto white-balance should be fine but using one of the presets may give more attractive results.

Have a play and see what you think.
You've read the article, now go take some fantastic images. You can then upload the pictures, plus any advice and suggestions you have into the dedicated Photo Month forum for everyone at ePHOTOzine to enjoy.