Need a hand

[jc1305us]

As there was a blood moon over the ocean, I decided to take a shot. Unfortunately, I was using a Sony mirrorless, which, I admit, I have not mastered (And I'm not sure I even want to at this point) Anyway, I had no tripod, just a high iso to avoid major shake. Since I could not figure out how to meter for the moon and adjust accordingly (a cinch on my Nikon DSLR) I was stuck with a blown out moon that now looks like an otherworldly sun. Can anyone tell me how to adjust the brightness of only the moon in Lightroom? I don't do Photoshop so that's not an option. Thanks! 

[httpwww.photo.netbarry]

Did you try using the Highlight control in LR? There may be a way to select a narrow tonal range to adjust but I've never done it successfully. Also the de-haze slider can be useful.   For your camera you might explore setting your exposure on Spot with the narrowest spot it has. Put the spot on the moon and slightly move it around looking through your EVF and find the exposure that looks good to you. It's useful to set a button where you can lock the exposure and recompose and focus.  It's easier done than said.  You should be able to find videos online for processing in LR and maybe how to set your camera up. There's several different ways to approach these issues. Some research on-line or LR and Sony type forums may be helpful.

[dcstep]

The moon is very bright, so it only need f/8, 1/800-sec and ISO 800, you can adjust accordingly from there. You don't say which Sony, but the current ones will have as much or more DR as your old DSLR, you just need to learn how to use in. You don't say which RAW conversion software you're using. In DxO, if you exposed for the moon, then you'd selectively keep the moon unchanged and raise the EV of everything else. If it's supposed to be dark out, you've raised it too much in your original exposure.

I doubt that this image can be rescued, because you've blown out all the moon details with over exposure.

Turn on the histogram in your EVF and learn to use it. Next time, you'll see exposure guidance right in your EVF.

[michael_kucinich]

Nice image. To my eye, I think it might be stronger if you cropped just a little from the top and crop the bottom at the base of the breaking wave, leaving out the bright secondary reflection at the bottom which seems distracting to me. I think simplifying it in this way would make it stronger.

[Robin Smith]

The moon is lit by full sun, so it takes a bright day exposure: it's always as simple as that (c. 1/500 @f8 ISO 100). If you had done this you would have lost a lot of shadow detail. The best way to take this is probably by composite blending of two images. Then you could have focused on the surf in the other blended shot, so the whole thing would look sharp. As it is, it has come out looking like the sun. It is possible that there might have been enough highlight detail in the waves to make the shot work without blending if you pumped up the shadows and over exposed the moon slightly, however having sufficient depth of field to cover from the moon to the surf probably could not have been accomplished, even at f22, hence the composite idea.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Robin Smith