Cloudy Moon

This is my first try at shooting the moon. The clouds were moving fairly

quickly and I played with a number of exposure options. This one

turned out the best. What do you think? Any thoughts for my next try?

Diane, This is certainly better than my first attempts at such photography.  According to what you wrote you used a UV filter, which probably did nothing to help or hinder your effort. Your moon image seems to show a very large amount of noise so I am guessing you used a high ISO - maybe because it was dark outside.  However the moon was still being illuminated by sunlight during all of the stages leading to totality.  Your image shows no crescents and looks a little orange so it perhaps was photographed at totality.

An old rule of thumb is - for a picture of a subject in direct sunlight use f16 at a shutter speed equal to the ISO of the film (today the dialed ISO in the digital camera)  That was called the "sunny 16 rule and was about the first thing one learned after figuring out what f/stops really were.  Since the moon is being illuminated by direct sunlight through all the stages leading to total eclipse that will work.  However the moon is actually a medium gray color (think of the moon walk pictures) so one might want to boost the exposure by one or two stops.   Another thing to know is that the earth is in constant rotation so use no shutter speed slower than 1/30th of a second or your picture will blur due to that movement.  That means you could set your shutter to 1/200th of a second having set the camera at ISO 200 and use f/16 (using manual mode of course) Compensating for the gray color of the moon's surface you would change the shutter speed to 1/50 of a second (two steps) or from f/16 to f/8 (two stops.)  Assuming you are using a tripod, and hopefully a cable release, so as not to jiggle the camera,  all of the stages of the eclipse will photograph well except for the total darkness.  In that case the moon is being illuminated only by the reflections from the earth.  This can vary a bit depending upon which side is facing the moon.  In that case you might do well setting the camera on automatic and take several pictures with each bracketed.  If your camera has a mechanism to reduce noise under such dark circumstances you might want to use it.  In any case use no slower shutter speed than 1/30th of a second or it will blur.  If you can set the camera to automatically take a series of bracketed exposures that would be a great plan.  We have moon eclipses pretty often so you will get more chances. Odds are you will get to see about one solar eclipse in your lifetime and I can testify it is about a quadrillion times more spectacular than a moon eclipse.  You probably can look up on the web when and where solar eclipses are coming.  I saw mine on the Washington-Oregon border in the late 70s.  Another is going to be there when I am about 90 so I just can't wait. 

Regards,

Jerry

Thanks Jerry for your VERY helpful post.  This photo was not taken during the eclipse -- I was sound asleep!  There were just a lot of fairly thick clouds around tonight...

...but it is a little trickier than it might seem. Jerry's advice is good. I would only add that at total eclipse using a shutter speed of 1/30s is going to seriously under-expose your shot. Your will have to sacrifice some sharpness because of movement of the moon in order to capture the shot - however, the spectacular color makes up for some loss of sharpness. The attached pic was actually 0.6s at f/5.6 - it could be sharper, but I was at max aperture and ISO 1600. My advice would be to try different exposures and see what works best - as Jerry says, bracketing will help.Cheers, RickDB