Basic Moon shot on D5100

Villain

New to photography really only ever had a compact point and shoot before.

Hopefully I'll get some time to attend some classes or at least educate myself in the near future. However at the minute I have a question that hopefully someone here can help me out with:

How to get a decent image of the moon, I have tried many scene selections on the D5100 but they none got any clear images the shutter speed was too slow I think.

So anyone got any advice for a beginner on how to achieve such a shot with D5100 and 18-55mm lens?

Cheers

DaireQuinlan

"moon" http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=63260282
"The moon" http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=52452284
"Moon Pic's (sic)" http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=55899339
"Shooting moon?" http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=54903616
"Exposing For The Moon" http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=51881447
"shoot the moon" http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=866614

Bound to be something somewhere there.

magicbastarder

Villain wrote: »

How to get a decent image of the moon

while it may be a useful exercise in learning how to deal with the conditions (dark, but with a bright light source you're shooting directly at), you're not going to get a good image of the moon alone with an 18-55mm lens. it's too short, and while the moon is a fascinating astronomical body, any shot you get of it is going to look like any shot anyone else gets of it.

dirtyghettokid

i've shot the moon with a 300mm lens on a crop body and it was crap really..... you want something really long, but it's big money and not worth it just for a pic of the moon..

Villain

Perhaps my wording was a little off, I'm not looking to get a close up shot of only the moon, rather a sky image with the moon been the focus point. I understand I'd need a 300mm lens or better for decent moon shot.

Thanks for the replies.

Borderfox

It can be quite hard as the moon is a really bright object in a very dark sky. If your camera has manual controls you can use these to manually set you shutter speed eg 1/60th and the aperture eg f8 and see what the picture looks like at these settings, then alter either the shutter speed eg if the picture is too dark move the shutter speed to 1/40th or the aperture eg f8 to f5.6 and so on till you get the required result. Post up your results here, you can upload the pictures to www.pix.ie

mayo.mick

Fairly new to my nikon D3100, here's my first attempt at shooting the moon. I took this shot of the full moon on 11/12/11, setup on tripod, mirror lockup, camera on timer, nikor 55/300mm zoomed to 300mm, F/8, 1/400sec, ISO 100. ( this was about my 20th attempt using different settings, nearly got frostbite aswell:D)

Borderfox

Canon 550d Sigma 120-300 f2.8 handheld
1/500th f4 ISO 400

CabanSail

Forget any Auto Modes for exposure. They will be trying to expose the whole frame, but most of yours will be BLACK.

You can try to Spot Meter the moon or else use values similar to those above on Manual.

magicbastarder

random point of interest - the moon is only a bit lighter in colour than coal.