shoot the moon

Wook

any pro out there that could tell me how long i have set my camera to get a clear moon shot ?
Tried several times but until now only some blurry white on a dark background.

also i was thinking of buying a convertor that makes my 300mm lens a 600 anyone have experience in quality effect changes ?

FinoBlad

@ 600mm, are you using a good tripod and cable release?
whats your shutter speed?

Samson

As above, make sure your camera is tripod mounted. If you don't have a cable release, use the timer function on your camera.

As far as exposure is concerned, the moon is actually quite easy to meter, if your camera has a spot or centre weighted meter just use that reading and bracket a bit.

Quality will degrade somewhat with teleconverters, and you will lose 2 stops of light (with a 2x converter). What is max aperture on your 300mm?

You say that all you get is blurry white on a black background, that sounds more like camera shake to me. What are you actually trying to achieve, do you have something specific in mind or just want a few detailed moon shots?

Wook

i want to have a detailed moonshot with a normal 300 lens, and i do use a tripod. (no cable release though)
Just need to know how long i need to expose the film to get this done, and my experiments seems under-exposed a lot while i did try to expose for 3-4 minutes. (full moon-not clouded)

FinoBlad

that exposure sounds way too long [dont forget the moon is moving too]

Personally I'd start at [assuming 100 to 160 iso film] 1/125, f/16 and bracket a lot and take notes

Try http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/moonlight.html for more info and this one which is more famous
http://www.thenocturnes.com

Saruman

The exposure time is too long for a moving objext. Though if you have a telescope, preferably motor driven, you can mount on top or even mount to scope if you want close ups... If not motor driven you will need to move with the slow mo controls and keep moon spot on. Hard.

FinoBlad

Just reading a book and theres an awesome moon photo by Marty Knapp. In the book it says that he used a
Canon F1, 85mm lens, Kodak ISO 25 Technical Pan film;
Exposure; 1/8th sec at f/16
Mount Vision Moonrise by Marty Knapp

~have to admit the picture in the book is so much better though

shutterclick

i shot this on a nikon coolpix 995 digital at 1/250 and full zoom last week




1/125 to 1/250 should be long enough on a clear night.

Wook

thats a pretty decent photo, 1/125 hmmm going to try this...