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Very nice pics indeed.
Question, my daughter is just getting into photography and she has a new bottom of the line nikon DSLR. I am not sure if it has the raw format or not. We would love to get a shot of the moon like yours, do you have any tips for taking a picture like that? She is a beginner but I used to take a lot of photos back when cameras used film. I still have my old nikon and lenses, just don't use it anymore.
Thanks
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If your DSLR won't do RAW then you might be able to get by without it and get some pretty good pics. My first moon pic is regular jpg, as shot from the camera.
I'm using a 70-300mm zoom, all the way out to 300. If you don't at least have a 200m lens then you can pretty much forget any good moon pictures. I want to get a 400mm lens, but they cost money.
You'll also want to use a tripod. I use the timer on my camera, so there's no residual camera shake after hitting the shutter. A cable release is a good alternative (and I use that for the long exposure shots because on bulb it will lock the shutter open until I push the trigger again).
My settings for the moon run between 1/25 and 1/125 sec , ISO 100-200, f8-f11 (my 70-300 lens seems sharpest in that aperture range, YMMV). Remember that the moon is a BRIGHT object, so just because the sky is dark doesn't mean you won't get a good exposure. Single point autofocus to get lock, and single point metering (though if you shoot in full manual mode the metering isn't that important).
If your lens has VR, turn it off. If you use autofocus, get good focus lock and then TURN IT OFF. The moon moves pretty quick, and if you're out taking a bunch of different exposures soon it will be out of the focus point and your camera will go crazy trying to refocus.
The starfield shots are 30 minute exposures, aperture as wide open as you can get, and focal length as short as you can get it (to get as much of the sky as possible). I use my 18-55mm on 18 mm, f3.6. ISO 200-400, and I turn on the "long exposure noise reduction" feature. Your base level camera may not have that feature. For long exposures you REALLY need RAW, you get better detail and you can clean up a lot of the noise without too much trouble.
There's a free open source package called Lightzone that's great for processing the images, just google it. Think Adobe's Lightroom for free.
The biggest thing is to just get out there any play around. Digital pictures are nearly free, so take more instead of less.