CameraPorn

As you all can tell from the previous post, I shot the moon last night, well not just the moon but a total lunar eclipse. It was a late night, and a long, tired day at work today, but it was worth the loss of sleep to shoot a rarely available subject, the eclipsed moon. The following explains the methods, settings and gear I used for the shoot and some general tips for moon and night sky photography.

Since there are probably hundreds of sites out there explaining moon photoography, I’ll keep this part as short as possible . The single most important thing to think about when ’shooting the moon’ is camera stability. Without a completely stable camera, your shots will come out blurry and unimpressive, but with a few simple tools that should already be in your kit, and a some basic methods, getting sharp moon images is actually quite simple. The tools you will need aside from Your DSLR:

Essential Gear

• A sturdy tripod
  A staple to any DSLR kit, and required for stable night photography at low ISO speeds. Try to get one with a quick-release and adjustable head. (I use a Bogen Manfrotto 30001N Tripod with 804RC2 3-way pan/tilt head.Shop for yours on Amazon )
• A shutter release cable
  Imperative to eliminate camera shake when the shutter button is pressed, but you could use the self-timer in a pinch.(wired or wireless - I use the off-brand Dot Line variety and it works great, but make sure you get one with a bulb exposure option. Shop for yours on Amazon)
• A telephoto lens
  A zoom or prime, but for the moon I suggest a minimum zoom of 300mm.
  (I use the inexpensive Canon EF 75-300 f/4-5.6. Shop for yours on Amazon)
• A camera with "mirror-lockup" funtionality
  This one isn’t absolutely required, but it does eliminate any mirror/shutter movement related camera vibrations and ensure maximum stability.

So you have the gear together, now comes the fun part…

The Proper Settings For Shooting The Moon

If you are able to use the gear for a stable camera, and dial-in the correct settings, getting the perfect moon shots is simple. Here are some general settings to try:

• Shoot RAW (the higher dynamic range and detail will help for post-processing)
• Camera set to manual mode
• 1/250th shutter speed
• Somewhere in the neighborhood of f/8 - f/11 aperture
• ISO 100 for minimum noise
• Mirror-lockup enabled (when available)
• Lens set to manual focus

Tip: To obtain the initial focus after getting the moon in my viewfinder, lens zoomed and my tripod locked down, I align a focus point to an edge of the moon, allow the autofocus to lock, then tun off autofocus on the lens without shifting the camera

And thats just about it… fire that remote release and you should get perfectly sharp, wonderfully detailed and cratered moon images like the one below, every time. Keep in mind, these settings are not the be-all end-all… feel free to experimient with different shutter speeds and apertures to see what gives you the best results for you.

When it comes to post-processing, keep it simple. Import your file into your favorite editing software (I prefer Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) and tweak the sharpness, highlights and shadows until you get a result you like. If anyones interested, I’ll make a preset out of the settings I used for the image below and make it available for download, just let me know in the comments.

For you guys who don’t have DSLRs yet… and you have a point and shoot with a decent zoom, many of the same principles apply. Use the self-timer and a stable tripod and your results should be satisfactory.

 

How I Shot The Lunar Eclipse

Now that we have the basics of lunar photography down, I’ll get into how I shot last nights lunar eclipse. I began by first utilizing the tips above to make sure I had a completely stable camera. I took the stability thingto the next level by tethering my camera via USB to my laptop and utilizing Canon’s EOS utility, which was included with my 30D. EOS utility (screenshot above) is a nifty piece of software that allows you to control your camera’s setting right from your laptop and in most cases shoot directly from the inteface. In this case, I was unable to utilize the interface shutter button, becasue it is disabled when using mirror lockup, requiring I use the remote release cable instead. Another feature of EOS utility I chose not to was the time-lapse option. (Yes, you can do time-lapse photography with a 30D if you are tethered…SWEET!)

I didn’t use the time-lapse option for a couple reasons: 1) It doesn’t work if you want to use mirror-lockup, a step I felt necessary for tack sharp shots and 2) It is simply AMAZING how quickly the moon moves across the sky, so setting and forgetting was not an option at 300mm because after 15 or so minutes, the moon would have traveled out of the frame. Another benefit of shooting tethered is that the images can be instantly imported to the computer, allowing for an instant review of sharpness outside of the camera’s LCD.

From their I shot in two different ways… exposing for the bright side and dark side of the moon.. please excuse the Pink Floyd reference . I will begin with exposing for the bright side.

Exposing For The Bright Side of The Moon

When normally shooting the moon, as outlined previously, you are basically exposing for the bright side in order to get as much detailed cratery goodness as possible in the moon. In the case of the eclipse, I wanted to build the composite image you see above of the moon as it traveled into earth’s shadow in order to show the progression of the eclipse. I achieved this by taking a shot every few minutes for the hour or so leading into the full eclipse. During this time I shot at a constant f/11 & ISO 100, but for every 3 to 4 shots, I had to adjust the shutter speed to expose the moon properly. I used a Lunar Eclipse Exposure chart I found on Mr.Eclipse.com, an excellent resource, as a guide for the appropriate shutter speed selections. Once I got all the shots, I brought them into Photoshop and composited the image above.

Exposing For The Dark Side of The Moon

The shot above is an example of exposing for the dark side of the moon. In these shots I wanted to get the detail of the reddish-orange portion of the moon that was already in earth’s shadow. This posed one major challenge to overcome. To remain at ISO 100, exposing for the dark side would require a several second exposure. I found out quickly that this was not going to be feasible. As I mentioned, the moon moves pretty quickly across the sky, and any long exposres were turning out blurry because in the time the shutter was open, the moon moved. I did some experimenting with settings and found that I could still get a sharp shot at a shutter speed shorter than 1.5 seconds. I then tweaked my ISO until the dark side of the moon was showing the detail I wanted to see. This equated to an ISO speed of 1600 with a 1 second shutter speed, hence the grain you see in the shot above. I was able to reduce the grain and noise significantly with Lightroom’s almost magical nose reduction tools in post-processing.

Additional Resources

• My photos from the eclipse on Flickr
• MrEclipse.com’s guide to shoting lunar eclipses
• Flickr group for last night’s eclipse
• NASAs Eclipse Information page
• The Next Total Lunar Eclipse: 2008 Feb 21

Thats going to just about do it for this one folks, but as always if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions let me know in the comments. On top of that we would love to see some of your own moon and eclipse shots, so feel free to link them in the comments.