I asked my audience for ideas for blog posts the other day, and somebody came back to me and said they wanted to learn how to take great photographs of the moon.
To be honest, it wasn’t something I had done before, but I know a man who had – my trusted 2nd shooter, David Porter.
David and I have worked together shooting weddings for probably around 10 years and he’s my go-to person when it comes to technical things in the studio, cameras and lenses.
Thanks to David for these tips on photographing the moon and for the beautiful photographs!
If you’d like to have a go at photographing the moon, in his words, here’s how you do it.
How to photograph the moon: Tips by David Porter
One of the best things about photographing the moon is that it’s fairly easy to get a good image.
Without too much technical or expensive equipment, you can capture moon shots from pretty much any location, so long as there is a clear sky to be had, which is often the biggest challenge.
It’s easiest to achieve a good picture using a DSLR a tripod and a telephoto lens, but with a little work, decent results can also be had with a smartphone.
Focusing on the Moon
If you want to get clear and crisp moon photos, your focus needs to be precise, so you’re going to have to do things manually.
These days you probably don’t have an actual manual lens, but any kit you do have will have an AF/MF slider – it needs to go manual.
Next, do not trust the infinity mark on your lens or the hard stop of the focusing ring because it’s not very likely to be reliable.
Instead, you’ll need to use features such as a live view or magnification to see in real-time what the lens is actually focused on.
With the camera on a tripod, find an area on the moon with craters and adjust the focus try to get them as sharp as you can by focusing back and forth until you find the sweet spot.
It’s worth noting that the Earth’s atmosphere can cause rippling and distortion, so if it’s possible it’s better to wait until the moon is higher in the sky – this time of year is ideal.
What camera settings should you use?
Pictures of the moon normally come out overexposed because the camera’s metering settings are trying to take an average over the frame as they would in daylight to ensure the highlights/shadows aren’t blowout or totally in darkness. So, once again its time to go manual.
Firstly, even though its night time, you need to turn your camera’s ISO down to 100 as this will help counter grain/speculation on the image.
Next, you need to set the lens aperture to f/11 to start with – for telephoto lenses this is around 3 or 4 stops down from fully open (unless you have a very expensive F2.8 lens) and is normally the sweet spot for good lens clarity.
Finally shutter speed. Now as you’re on a tripod, a speed of 1/125th of a second is a good starter. If the image comes out too bright, this is the one factor that you should change and increase as the faster the shutter speed, the fewer signs of camera shake appear.
The longer the lens, the more likely that any movement of the tripod will show up. So, to counter this, you can use the self-timer on the camera (or a remote if you have one) to help leave an interval between the shutter press and the image to help eliminate any potential shake.
To get the best results, you should always shoot in RAW if you can. Take a test shot and, if you know how to, check the histogram to make sure that you haven’t blown out the highlights and that the moon itself is not overly dark.
Can you photograph the moon on a smartphone?
Most smartphone cameras don’t have the focal length to take a picture of the moon (there are some exceptions).
But, if you have access to either a telescope, spotting scope or binoculars, it is possible using a tripod and a phone adapter suited to what you’re using.
You’d also probably need a phone app like ProCam or Camera +2 to let you change your camera settings manually as most phones don’t have this option beyond +2 or -2 exposure compensation.
The process is basically the same and an adapter holds your device in place at the eyepiece.
From there on, the image is yours to get creative with, from inserting into landscapes to simple observations.
