MOON PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS

Its easy to learn how to capture the moons craters and detail with your digital camera. In fact once you get a handle on why you must use these wonderful photographic methods, taking pictures of the moon will be pretty easy from now on.

Photo captured by Navid Qureshi (Click Image to See More From Navid Qureshi)

The first thing to try for, naturally, is a clear night a night without clouds. Clouds can smear and smudge an otherwise sharp photo of the moons craters. A lovely, clear night provides the ideal circumstances to take photos of the moon. If there are clouds that butt in, then use that. Try a photo of a soft cloud streaking gently in front of the surface of the moon. This really does lay the foundation for superb images. So lets have a look at precisely what you will want for your moon shots.

Lets examine what focal length works best. If you want to take pictures of the moon close up, use a four inch telescope. You can screw your digital camera on a mount and then the telescope effectively results in being your lens. It utilises the lens and you can get close images quite straightforwardly. Of course your camera will need to have the ability to interchange its lenses. If you dont own a telescope then you can use a telephoto lens. A telephoto photographic lens is a lens that is very long. You may have seen them before. It is used for wildlife photography and portraiture, like wedding photography for example. A good range of focal length might be something like 200mm to 400mm. These telephoto lenses are very expensive but get the loveliest shots.

Numerous people capture the moon the equivalent way as they would a dark night time city scene. If you do this too, you may experience a big ball of bright light against a black night sky, without detail. That may be okay if you are photographing the moon over a pond for example, but if you like to take photos of the craters, then this is basically not the way to shoot it.

Photo captured by Catherine Read (Click Image to See More From Catherine Read)

The moon is very, very bright, especially when its full. I suggest choosing settings that are used for brighter, daylight co nditions. I know this sounds funny, so bear with me.

When I shoot the moon I put my settings at anything from 180th of a second to 60th of a second. If you are not sure which shutter speed is better to use then try few shots on a different selection of shutter speeds to get the best one.

You will want a tripod when you take photos of the moon. This is since the moon is so far away, any movement of the digital camera and you may find you chance missing the gorgeous craters. Position your camera on a tripod, and if you have one, use a shutter remote cable to be in command of the shutter speed. We use these because we do not want to accidentally move the camera by pressing the shutter button down. And thats right, even movement as light as a finger can put your entire photo out of focus.Its essenti al to keep the camera fixed and immobile so you get everything in focus. I use manual focus so I can get the craters as sharp as I can. I occasionally find that auto focus can either have difficulties getting the correct focus or sometimes cant focus in the leas t. It can be tie consuming and frustrating. Try moving the focus ring until you come across a position whereby the moons craters look razorsharp.ISO is a quality of your digital camera that controls how responsive the camera is to lighting. If you are photographing the moon as the major theme against a black sky, then you will not want a very high ISO.

Photo captured by Cristiano Frank (Click Image to See More From Cristiano Frank)

If you are shooting the moon as an addition to your shot, then this becomes a different matter altogether. The closer you get to the moon, the less ISO you require.

Since the moon is in the far distance I suggest shooting with a tiny aperture. In other words make use of a large f-stop number. I usually fancy F22 for the sharpest I images I can get. Its better to get as much sharpness into the deepness of your scene as you possibly can. If you can go higher than F22, then by all means try it out. Just remember that the small your aperture the longer the shutter speed you will need.

Shoot at the very maximum quality you can. I always select RAW for all my photos and shooting the moon is no exception. If you want excellent quality pictures then opt for the highest quality setting you can go. Even if you are not able to shoot in RAW, pick the largest Jpeg size possible. This might be displayed as Jp eg L.

Once you have taken your moon photograph, you may have to sharpen it a bit. Not for the reason that your photo will come out blurry, but remember, it is over three hundred thousand kilometres away. A little increase in the sharpening will help enhance some of detail

in the craters. Try improving the darks and lights a little too by using your contrast tool in Photoshop or your favourite editing program. That naturally helps to give the surface more of a three dimensional look and detail, rather than having a large flat white surface. Increasing contrast, clarity and sharpness makes the moons craters look deeper and more interesting.

Photo captured by Tammy (Click Image to See More From Tammy)

Moon photography is so much fun and takes a precise type of photographic applications. Just apply some of these principles and methods that I use and you will pleasantly surprised at the lovely photos you get all the time.

About the Author: Amy Renfrey writes for DigitalPhotographySuccess.com. Shes photographed many things from famous musicians (Drummers for Prince and Anastasia) to weddings and portraits of babies. Amy also teaches photography online to her students.

Knowing Your Shutter Speed

Weve established how your camera creates photos by exposing light onto your sensor and that your shutter speed controls how long your image is exposed for. However, your shutter can do a lot more than just gauge the right exposure for you it can drastically change the content of your image by capturing motion in various ways. The goal here is to know how shutter speed can affect your image, and what situations you can apply it to. That is what this section will cover how to master your shutter speed, and several creative ways that is can change your landscape.

Freezing Action With Your Shutter

Youve probably noticed that in some photos, the action appears to be literally frozen in time such as water being thrown from a glass, or an eagle swooping down to catch a fish from the river.

The image above shows falling raindrops, an example of movement that we cant see with our naked eye as it happens too quickly. Fast shutter speeds allow us to freeze motion so we can analyze how subjects appear as they move. For this spider web photo, I used a very wide aperture (f/1.8) so that I could achieve a fast enough shutter speed to capture the raindrops as they fell (1/4000ths of a second). Using this wide of an aperture also explains the beautiful bokeh present and the shallow depth of field. When images like these are captured, youre literally freezing the action with a fast shutter speed usually 1/2000ths of a second or faster. However, the exact shutter speed needed to freeze motion is entirely dependent on how fast your subject is moving the faster the movement, the higher your shutter speed will need to be in order to capture motion without any blur. To visualize this, think of a rainstorm and how fast the droplets fall from the sky like in the sample image above. Usually, we cant isolate them in the sky as they fall, but rather when they hit the ground and splash. However, a fast shutter speed can freeze the drops as they fall, offering a visual that is rarely seen without this assistance. At times, the action can happen so quickly that we dont realize what has happened until its over. By freezing movement, it lets us look at a split-second moment (or rather, up to 1/8000ths of a second for most cameras) in great detail, which is why fast shutter speeds are so popular in sports photography. If you think of why cameras are used for photo finishes during a race, this concept makes much more sense . Our brains cant register who hit the finish line first when its a matter of inches between the contestants, so we rely on a camera using a very fast shutter speed to show us the results. If a slow shutter speed was used, the motion would be blurred thus rendering the image useless in determining who won the race. Like aperture, you can set your SLR camera to allow you to adjust your shutter speed to the setting you want, while still letting the camera change the aperture for you to allow different amounts of light in for proper exposure. This is called shutter priority mode, and is essentially a reverse of aperture priority mode.

The comparision images above show how differently your scene can look when shooting at different shutter speeds. When photographing the falling snow at 1/40, you can see that the flakes appear streaked and distracting as they move across my scene not the result I wanted. As I increased my shutter speed, I also needed to widen my aperture to let in

enough light to still expose my image properly. At 1/320, you can see that the snowflakes are now visible as they fall the movement has been frozen. When choosing a shutter speed for your images landscapes in particular ask yourself if anything is moving in your photo, and how you want to capture that movement. Usually were not dealing with fast -moving objects with landscapes, but like in the sample images above, you may want to freeze the movement of rain, snow, or water.

Slowing Down the Movement for Landscapes

For landscapes, youll more often than not find yourself using a slower shutter speed rather than a fast one in order to capture the image you want especially if your intent is a deep depth of field. However, you can extend your shutter beyond simply what is needed to expose your scene correctly. By manipulating how much light enters your camera, you can prolong your shutter greatly, allowing you to create a surreal, smooth effect with clouds, water, or other moving objects like in the examples below.

This photo had a shutter speed of 400 seconds, which allowed for the water to become glass-smooth eliminating all waves and currents. Additionally, the slow-moving clouds were captured in a surreal way, appearing dream-like and painterly. Not only is the content unique, but the colors from the extended shutter have blended together much like a watercolor painting. This combination of surreal sky colors would not have registered if I took this photo with a normal shutter speed.

When your available light is limited, you sometimes are forced to use a slow shutter speed to gather enough light for a usable image. A longer shutter speed was needed in order to capture this harvest moon and the trees in the foreground (8 seconds). If I decided to just expose this photo as the camera saw fit, then I would have a detailed image of the moon, but none of the foreground tree detail. The longer exposure allowed for more light to be captured than what the camera recommended, and applied a surreal sun-like effect to the moon. When you take a photograph with a slow shutter speed (usually one 1/30th of a second or less depending on the lens youre using), youre exposing your image for a longer time than what your eyes can normally register youre encapsulating an extended piece of time and displaying all the movement that occured in one single frame. This works in the opposite sense of when you use a fast shutter speed freezing action that we cannot see with the naked eye.

Heres another way to think about long exposures with a slower shutter speed, youre extending the exposure time, capturing what our eyes cant see because they work too fast. Like in the images above youre basically compiling hundreds of images that you would normally see separately with your eyes over the span of 400 seconds (or whatever your extended shutter speed is), one on top of the another, in order to create your long exposure photograph.

How to Avoid Blurry Photos

When shooting in low-light conditions, you may have experienced photos that appear blurry, out of focus, or just unusable. This is most likely caused by what we call camera shake. In short, camera shake is caused by slow shutter speeds when the camera is handheld youre literally exposing your image so long that the minor movements you make with your camera just by holding it can cause the exposure to blur since the camera is repositioning itself during exposure. If your camera moves during a long exposure, it cant render your image sharply. Even the most minor and unnoticabl e movements in your camera can greatly affect image sharpness and quality. Tripods are the instant fix to this since it sets your camera to a fixed point, making sure that any shaking caused by the camera being handheld is now obsolete. What if you dont have a tripod, or a tripod is not an option for the scene youre shooting? Is there a rule of thumb to go by, a way to calculate the minimum shutter speed needed to capture tack-sharp photos?

Calculating the Minimum Shutter Speed

How do you figure out if your exposure is too long to be exposed without camera shake? There has to be a limit somewhere since photos taken with plenty of light dont suffer from this. Where is the line on shutter speeds that cant be crossed over without a tripod? Yes, there is a minimum shutter speed that you should not go under if you wish to have a photo without blur caused by camera shake. However, this will change depending on the lens you use since longer focal lengths will require a faster or higher shutter speed. There is a scientific explanation for this if you like to know the exact reason, but for now just know that your minimum shutter speed is directly related to your focal length. The most popular rule of thumb in calculating your minimum shutter speed is 1/your maximum focal length for a full-frame (35mm) camera. For crop sensors (APS-C), your shutter speed will need to be a bit faster 1.5 your maximum focal length. For example, if you have a 50mm prime lens (one without zoom), your minimum shutter speed for sharp photos will be 1/50th of a second on a full-frame sensor, and 1/75th of a second for crop sensors. If you have a 18-180mm zoom lens, your minimum shutter speed will be 1/180th of a second for a full-frame, and 1/270th of a second for a crop sensor. However, youll often find that your exact calculations produce a shutter speed that does not exist, so you will need to round up to to the nearest option. For the lens example above, the mimimum shutter speed for a sharp photo would be 1/200th of a second on a full frame, and 1/320 for the crop sensor. As I said, this is the most popular rule. However, recent experiments have concluded that a new rule should be followed to ensure that your images are as sharp as they can be, and free of blur. Instead of 1/the maximum focal length of your lens, you should double your minimum shutter speed to be twice the maximum focal length. So if youre still using the 50mm prime lens, dont shoot anything under 1/100th of a second on a full -frame if you want to be absolutely sure that you wont have any camera shake in your image. While you could probably get away with using 1/50th of a second most of the time with your 50mm lens, its always better to play it safe if you want a sharp image. Also, since youre shooting digital , you can check your images on your LCD screen to see if you have a sharp enough photo before continuing. If your lens has image stabilization capabilities, make sure to turn it on when you have the camera handheld (if you have your camera on a tripod, you should turn this feature off as it can actually be detrimental to image sharpness when stabilized on a tripod long story). This lens feature will help the camera stabilize your image if you cannot get a fast enough shutter speed to eliminate camera shake depending on how fast you are moving your camera, you are usually safe for a sharp image up to a few stops below your minimum shutter speed calculation. This is a very handy tool that can save an otherwise unusable image.

NOTE: A full stop in photography means adjusting either your f/stop or shutter speed one setting in either direction. So if your minimum shutter speed is 1/100th of a second, then youre probably safe to shoot at 1/60th of second (two settings slower) with image stabilization turned on.

How to Get a Faster/Slower Shutter Speed

If youre in a low light situation where youre finding it difficult to increase your shutter speed by available light alone, there are several things you can do with your manual settings to increase your shutter speed. As you learned in the previous lesson on aperture, the wider you open up your lens, the more light is let in thus a faster shutter speed. You can use the side effect of adjusting your aperture to your advantage if youre looking to speed up your shutter. So the next time you find yourself with a need to increase your shutter speed, look to your aperture for a boost and shoot wide open. Alternatively, you can use your aperture to slow down your shutter speed if you want to take a longer exposure to blur water, clouds, or other moving objects in your landscape. By increasing your f/stop (making your aperture smaller), youre restricting the amount of light let into your camera so to compensate, your shutter speed will need to be longer. For several reasons, its not wise to shoot with a very small aperture usually above f/22 as your image quality and clarity will start to drastically drop. If youre interested in learning more about this phenomenon, you can click here for a detailed explanation. For example, if youre taking a photo at f/8 with a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second, you can increase your aperture to f/16 which will automatically decrease your shutter to 1/8th of a second (when shooting in aperture priority mode). There are side effects to using your aperture that you should be aware of. Since y oure adjusting your f/stop, youre also changing your depth of field. So if youre goal is a long exposure with a wide aperture (shallow depth of field) during the daytime, youre going to have far too much light to be able to execute this. Thankfully, you can purchase filters for long exposure photography that can decrease the amount of light that is let into your lens (think of these filters as being similar to a pair of sunglasses). These ND filters come in various strengths, and many photographers will filter stack by placing one filter on top of the other in order to achieve very long exposures under daylight.

Summary
So to recap briefly here: The shutter can not only control how much light hits your sensor, but it can cast wonderful effects on moving subjects in your image. Whether you want to freeze action or slow it down, your shutter can create scenes not visible to the naked eye. Your shutter can also cause you some unwanted complications if you dont know how to compensate for them. Camera shake can blur your images when you dont have enough of light to handhold your camera, so a tripod is often needed to take sharp images. For landscape photographers, we generally use a small aperture and often shoot in low light conditions (the twilight and golden hours), so a tripod is definitely necessary. You can also make changes to your manual settings like adjust your aperture in order to achieve the shutter speed you want if the available light (either too much or too little) is causing problems for you. To add further functionality to your shutter speed, you can also adjust your ISO setting. Your ISO is to digital as film speed is to analog photography (Kodak 400 film for example). In the next section, I talk more about your ISO and how you can use that to adjust your shutter speed, and also some potential drawbacks when doing so.