Foggy Moon

[stacy_aiken]

<p>Hi,<br>

I'm in Utah trying to get a coupe of good pictures of the Super Moon over our mountains. We have been unusually humid the last few days and my moon looks like a giant cottonball. I've tried different combinations of settings and different filters. In the past I've been able to take moon/star pictures with some success but I'm at a loss. Any ideas?<br>

Thanks!<br>

Stacy</p>

<p> </p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Same problem here. The night sky was a bit hazy when I was taking photos. Filters won't help and may even make it more difficult to wring out any detail.</p>

<p>If you shot raw files, try highlight recovery and clarity/detail adjustments. I'm trying those adjustments in Lightroom and Photo Ninja to see which wrings out the most detail.</p>

[savagesax]

I think you are kind of out of luck.

 

The next Super Moon is on Sept 9th. Check the weather a few days ahead of time.

Maybe travel to a dry area with less haze.

 

Go manual and RAW if you can. When shooting the moon use the F16 rule. This too

could help a lot. Don't meter, simply set your camera to F-16. Set your ISO around 100

and if you have a tripod that will help as well. The shutter speed should be around 125th

to 250th of a second.

[JosvanEekelen]

<p>Moon shots rule ot thumb: f/11, shutter speed 1/ISO. Haze is something you can hardly compensate for, let alone control. Hope for better circumstances.</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>The traditional means of dealing with atmospheric haze is to take lots of images (often <i>really</i> "lots", with a web cam) and run the result through a program intended for focus stacking. Essentially this lets you pick out the pixels that are sharp from each image.<br />

<br />

It's better for a small amount of atmospheric turbulence than for worse condition, but if you've got hazy cloud in the way that's shifting, you might get small gaps that let you collectively get a good image.<br />

<br />

Otherwise, "standing outside for a long time and waiting for the weather to improve" is a technique I've used during lunar eclipses. Or you can just try to make the best of the conditions for artistic reasons - a moon in a bit of cloud can actually look good, though I'm not so sure about haze. Good luck.</p>

[mark_pierlot]

<blockquote>

<p>Moon shots rule of thumb: f/11, shutter speed 1/ISO. Haze is something you can hardly compensate for, let alone control. Hope for better circumstances.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Jos, I'm just curious as to why those settings are generally optimal for moon shots. A member recently posted a couple of moon shots on the Canon FD forum, and the settings he used were close to those prescribed by the rule of thumb (f/11, 200 ISO, 1/125).</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<blockquote>Jos, I'm just curious as to why those settings are generally optimal for moon shots.</blockquote>

 

<p>I'm not sure that "optimal" is the term I'd use, but they'll give roughly a correct exposure.<br />

<br />

There is a "sunny 16" rule for photographing in sunlight: The amount of light falling on the scene in direct sunlight means that you'll get an exposure which is representative of the surface if you set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1/ISO. This combination justs collectively describes the response to the amount of light present - f/8 and 4/ISO is just as valid, just harder to remember.<br />

<br />

The equivalent rule for the Moon is "loony 11" - I presume that either the moon rocks which are traditionally rendered as "mid grey" are about a stop darker than what you'd normally want to be "mid grey" on earth in terms of the amount of light that they reflect (the Earth and the Moon are about the same distance from the Sun, so the incoming light is the same), or that it's simply a case of trying to make the darker bits of the Moon a bit more visible. You can use f/8 and 2/ISO for the shutter speed if you prefer, getting the same exposure, it's just that "loony eleven" is easier to remember. I'd probably actually pick a shutter speed that minimises camera shake (or even atmospheric effects). The (sunlit side of the) moon is pretty bright, in general, so it shouldn't be too impossible to combine a fast-ish shutter speed, a sharp aperture and a reasonably noise-free ISO. At a given brightness, there's always a trade-off between the three, and the best option will depend on your lens, the support, and how your camera handles noise.<br />

<br />

The trick is, in general, not to rely on the camera's meter (although technically you can get away with spot metering off the moon if you have a long lens). Most meters will pick up a lot of the black(ish) background sky, and overexpose the moon in an attempt to compensate for the blackness.</p>

[Mike Gammill]

<p>If the haze is not too bad, then an increase in contrast during post processing might help. YMMV</p>

[ussorca]

<p>Stacy and Bob B... I believe the next "supermoon" is August 10, per an article I read yesterday.</p>

[johnny_wu1]

<p>I can confirm through the photographer's ephemeris that August 10th is a super moon. Larger than the one that just passed, though just barely =)</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

There is no real need to catch a "super moon".<br>It's the same old moon, and you will not see that it appears a little bit larger. Not even when you have something in the foreground besides the moon.<br><br>The difference in brightness too is not something you would notice, not even with a dry, clear sky. As explained above, shutterspeeds are short anyway, so a little fraction of a stop more light is not going to change things 'photo technically'. When exposed correctly, you even can't see any difference at all in the resulting image.<br><br>So every year provides 12 or 13 opportunities to catch the full moon.

[hjoseph7]

<p>You are probably going to need a Long tele-lens if you really want the moon to look "Super".</p>

[Palouse]

<p>September is another super moon. </p>

[Jeff Lear]

<p>While the Supermoon is difficult to visually differentiate from the regular Moon, it <em>does</em> appear up to 30% larger on the sensor which I've found to offer significantly more detail. The only way to overcome hazy conditions would be to follow the advice of Andrew and focus stack images using a program like RegiStax (freeware). I've had mixed results with RegiStax but I have yet to educate myself on the best approach with that particular software.</p>

[q.g._de_bakker]

Is the maximum difference in apparent size of the Moon between perigeum and apogeum not only about half that, ca. 15%, Jeff?<br>There is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon#mediaviewer/File:Supermoon_comparison.jpg"> good comparison picture in Wikipedia</a>.

[Jeff Lear]

<p>You are correct, Q.G. I incorrectly recalled the illumination percentage rather than the apparent disc size. 30% <em>brighter</em>, 15% larger.</p>