30 minute long exposure tonight (not stacked). I think a full moon is actually not going to be as good as a crescent because it is too bright relative to everything else. A half or crescent moon would let me get the background lit up more.




This doesn't look too good. I don't know if anyone else had success with moon long exposure shots. I don't want to cheat and do a stacked image, though. But I might have to to get it to work.

I can tell you that the howling was impressive tonight.

If there were wolves in the area, I'd be scared.
What am I doing wrong with this photo? It's low quality. How do I get awesome photos like FredMan?

The moon is in bright sunlight, thus it needs a short daylight exposure to look correct.
The trees and buildings are in the dark, thus needing a long exposure to look correct.

The results you are looking for are not possible using a single exposure picture.

You could take two pictures, one for each part of the image, and combine them using compositing.
You could take multiple exposures and try some HDR processing.
Light painting would work well with the trees and buildings.

I would go with the compositing as it is easier to get exactly what you want.

A split ND filter might eventually get the job done for the exposure if you can get it dark enough.
Unfortunately, the long exposure will result in motion blur on the moon.

You need to ask yourself, "Do I want a picture of the moon?  Or do I want a long-exposure shot at night?"

Because you can't have both.  Well, you can, but then you end up with what you got there.  You're blowing out the moon, and clipping the data.  There's really no way to get a long-exposure pic of something like the moon without it looking like a light-sabre arc without using some kind of neutral density filter.

The moon is a very bright object.  Exposure-wise, you don't think about it as if you're shooting a dark object, just use normal settings.  Like you're shooting in daylight.

This one is 500mm, f/5.6, 1/100, ISO 100.

Moon 20201120 by FredMan, on Flickr

Now, don't get me wrong.  Long night exposures are way cool, but not with this bright-ass welding-arc moon trail.  You need a dark sky.  Then, you can capture the ISS flying across the sky, as an arc.  This one is 240 seconds.

ISS Transit 20180126 by FredMan, on Flickr

If you want something like great star trails, drawing circles across the sky, you're going to need to not only take long exposures, you're going to need to take a bunch of them and combine them by stacking.  Thew multiple exposures and stacking is critical here; long exposures create a whole crap-ton of sensor noise.  Just the nature of the beast.  In-camera long-exposure NR is time consuming (it essentially takes a "dark frame" of equal exposure and then subtracts the noise in the dark frame from the image).  And if you're shooting for trails long gaps in the sequence from in-camera NR is going to lead to long gaps in the trails.  Once you've shot a bunch of frames, stack, and process, you get something like this:

Snowy Startrails by FredMan, on Flickr

And don't always aim for the North Star, star trails pics can show some cool stuff when pointed in other directions.  This is looking almost due south:

Edit by FredMan, on Flickr

Here's another one in the same direction, but with a wider lens.  Really shows off the distortion wide-angle lenses give to the frame.

Rocky Knoll StarStack 2016-03-28b by FredMan, on Flickr

The other thing to think about is that the moon MOVES.  Like really fast, even if you can't see it.  Which means you need to think about the 500 Rule, which says that to avoid "trails" when shooting long exposures, your max shutter should be about your focal length divided by 500.  So, for a 100mm lens, your max exposure should be around 5 seconds.

Here's how much it moves every 6 minutes (and this was shot with the intervalometer, then stacked)

Moon 120mm Transit 6 minute Interval by FredMan, on Flickr

The sun also hauls ass, as seen in this combined sun and moon shot at 5 minute intervals.

Front Field Sun Moon Set_5-Minute by FredMan, on Flickr

Intervalometers are easy to use, most mid-tier and up camera bodies have them built in.

Now, if you want to get something cool like, say, the ISS transiting the sun or the moon, you're going to need two things:  A long lens, and a bunch of frames.  And then you're going to need to process/crop/etc the individual frames and then stack then in something like Photoshop.  The big PITA about stacking is, well, you need to be precise.  You can't hack it and say "good enough", because then instead of a nice sharp moon and a nice sharp ISS, you're going to get this horrendous blurry shot that you'll trash as soon as you see it.

For this type of shot you DON'T use an intervalometer.  My method is to mount the camera on a tripod, frame my subject, TURN OFF VR, brace myself as best I can, and shoot continuous high.  There's a little camera motion, but not so much that the crop/stack edit process is too tedious.  And your exposure is high enough (I shot this at 500mm and 1/640 second) that the physical movement of the camera during shutter-open isn't too much to blur the image.

And then you can get combined shots like this!  Daytime ISS moon transits!

ISS Lunar Transit 2021-01-23_SuperCrop by FredMan, on Flickr

And get your hands on a solar filter (Thousand Oaks Optical, I'm looking at YOU) and you can get the same thing of the ISS and sun!  500mm, 1/200 second.

ISS Transit 20200201 Stack_ by FredMan, on Flickr

gheeeeeezus........always amazed how much some of you guys know.     interesting read.    thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Ok thank you. Yes I have an intervalomter in my digital camera. I'll have to figure out how to use it :-)

Thank you Fred Man. Inspiring stuff there.

Every intervalometer I’ve used (Nikon only) lets you set the exposure length, the number of exposures overall, and the time in between each exposure.

It takes a minute to first figure it out but it’s pretty intuitive.

Here's a series of exposures during a lunar eclipse.  I need to work on this, dropping 9/10 frames, or something to that extent to get some differentiation in the stages of the eclipse.  I've never been particularly happy with the still image, but it works decently enough for video.



Here's one individual frame near totality.

The moon is so bright, about the best you can hope for is an hour long exposure or so, where the moon illuminates your foreground close to daytime conditions, and the moon appears as a streak in the sky.  But, the exposure is going to be so stopped down, no other objects will appear in the sky.

A 2 or 3 stop graduated ND filter can help bring out the foreground while holding back the moonlight, maybe; but, it also risks adding flare to the image.

The moon is tough in a continuous long exposure.  Even in composites, it's still tough to convey a meaningful image without the moon becoming too much of a distraction.

I feel the need to go back and rework this image to remove the air traffic, and possibly some start from the leading frame.  It's a composite of one frame with the setting crescent moon and stars, followed by another two hours or so of star trails after the moon had set.  And some road traffic on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Flower Supermoon over the Tower of David in Jerusalem. In order to get this I had to shoot the moon properly exposed, then the foreground. I blended them in Photoshop.  I don't have the skill some of the other guys have, but it's not going to stop me from trying and improving.

Photography is an art form. I'm not a photojournalist, I am trying to create a beautiful picture as I visualize it. Ansel Adams, one of America's premier landscape photographers was an absolute magician in the darkroom. One of his famous quotes is, "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

Attached File

Some mad skills in this thread.
Well done gents

Clouds screwed up my 5 minute interval eclipse shot

5-minute Interval by FredMan, on Flickr

But I could go back and cherry-pick the good frames for a composite

Eclipse 600mm Full Sequence-9 Frames Resize_ by FredMan, on Flickr

And here’s a 4-minute sun/moon stack.

Sun Moon Track 16mm 4 min by FredMan, on Flickr

You guys are on a different level than I am. Too bad I don't live in your state or we could meet up for a night photoshoot.

Just started taking pics. Got lucky with a full moon in the city.  At least I think it is a good start. Attached File