Photographing exposure extremes caused by moonlight

[ted_smith1]

Hi

 

I was on holiday recently and as the moon rose from the horizon it had a really

nice red glow to it with a nice red light cast onto the ocean and the atmosphere

was moderately lit but getting darker by the second. A lovelly scene.

 

As the moon rose it got brighter and the sky got darker until the moon was fully

lit with bright light cast onto the sea beneath it in quite a narrow field and

the sky and remaining sea totally black.

 

I tried to photograph both scenes as they developed using a combination of

overall matrix metering, centre weighted metering and spot metering using my

Nikon D70s.

 

Unfortunately, the finished results were either :

 

1) An overexposed washed out moon and a moderately exposed scene overall

 

2) A correctly exposed moon but the rest of the scene totally black and underexposed

 

3) The scene entirely overexposed with the moon area totally burnt out

 

4) One area of the moderately lit scene exposed correctly but the remaining dark

areas of the sea underexposed and the bright moon overexposed

 

My question is, therefore, when you're faced with a scene with a very small but

very bright object mixed in with a much larger overall scene of total darkness

or low light, how does one correclty expose the scene? If you expose for the

darkness the bright object is overexposed. In my experience, if you expose for

the bright object all the detail in the dark area is lost. If you expose for a

combination of the two (e.g. the area of the sea that is lit by the moonlight)

neither areas look correct other than the small section used for metering.

 

Any advice warmly welcomed

 

Cheers

 

Ted

[joshroot]

The best way to shoot something like this is to shoot a number of images and bracket heavily. Then merge two of the images together in photoshop. Not exactly "pure photography" to some people. But it really is the only way to get a a evenly exposed image for something like this.

[steve88w]

I agree with Josh.

While I'm no expert, I've seen DRAMATIC exposure range easily combined with software such as Photomatix. (Google search HDR imaging) Even pictures that appear to have little detail, a simple bracketing of +/-2 produces results that are mind blowing.

The software is super easy to use and you can control how surreal the image can be. (everywhere from perfectly life like as the human eye sees it to the extreme of sensory overload)

[brandon.r.foster]

There are two ways to do this. For the first way, you have to work quickly. Step one, expose for the scene that you wish to shoot. Got that image? Good. Step two, expose for the very bright, and highly reflective ball in the sky. I forgot to mention, but for both methods, it is direly important that you shoot off of a tripod. Wouldn't want any axial aberrations, or spatial relation screw ups buggering with your beautiful image. Now, go home and open Photoshop. Cut said bright and highly reflective ball out of the image that you exposed for it, and paste it over the washed out version. Bingo! The second way is the one that Josh recommended. This will work too, but your ambient areas will be fooled around with. The first trick that I outlined is commonly used in architectural photography, where one wants a room with a big window exposed properly, but also wants the view out of said window exposed properly as well.

<br />

Hope that this is of some use,

<br />

Brandon.

[willhl]

Basically the moon is much much brighter than the moonlite scene, I think I've heard ~14 stops brighter. A friend recently said that during the eclipse the shadow part of the moon as 7 stops darker than the unshadowed part. Anyway this basically means that you can't get both in the same exposure so either go with the HDR (there may be issues with V. large exposure differences) or shoot at dusk where there is still some sunlight lighting the scene however depending on how much sunlight you still may not get the moon detail.

[ted_smith1]

Thanks very much chaps - this is very useful. Basically, from what I knew already and from what has been said here it would seem that using traditional photography techniques this is one of those scenes that is incredibly difficult (if not impossible?) to photograph and the only way to do it, really, is by the merger of several exposed scenes using digital software.

 

This is re-assuring - I wanted to check that my inability to capture the scene was not down to my failings as a photographer or mis-understanding of a technique but rather that the scene was just too extreme.

 

Next time I will know to use bracketing and digital software to merge them.

 

Thanks

 

Ted

[twmeyer]

"<i>it is direly important that you shoot off of a tripod</i>"... I think this means that the camera must be <i>on</i> a tripod. Perhaps it could also read "shoot <i>from</i> a tripod" .. t

[heartyfisher]

Another thing to consider is to use neg film.. Since the D70 is prone to blooming (All Didital cameras are but the D70 is more susceptible than the higher end ones)