Moon help

Hoping for a little insight from the collective knowledge here.

Tried a few early evening shots of the moon last night with a Pentax K10d and could not get a clear, precise image.

Basically what I was getting was a white blob. This was on a stable platform using a 200mm lense. Now I wasn't expecting to see every nook and cranny, but I was hoping for a little light / dark definition.

In a few instances I got some flaring around the moon itself, so I put the UV filter back on which maybe helped. I tried quite a few different combinations of aperture and exposure and nothing seemed to help, did manual focus just to be sure after trying AF but everything seemed in focus when I pressed the shutter.

Is this just not something a regular SLR is capable of or (much more likely) am I doing something stoopid?

Thanks in advance.

-- Bass

It sounds as if your images are overexposed. A rule of thumb is shooting the moon - use F11 and the reciprocal of the ISO for the shutter speed - or equivalent. So if you are using ISO 250, your exposure setting will be F11 at 1/250. Its a good idea to bracket one half to one stop either way.I would not use a shutter speed less than 1/125 due to the speed at which the moon moves across the frame. Also, using a 200mm lens will give you only a very small image. Try using a teleconverter or a longer focal length.

Gene,

Thanks for the reply. I knew it wasn't going to be a huge image, it was mostly practice for a moonrise shot I've been working on and then I was shocked at how I couldn't even get the moon on its own, much less with some other landscape goodies

Bass, I have the K10D too, and I can say for certain it's not the camera. Last time I took some images of the moon, I was using my Pentax 80-320 lens, had the f stop set at 5.6 and a 1/100 shutter speed with the iso set at 200. No blobs, and good details in the moon, although a bit smallish compared to using my 170-500mm. You have to remember that the moon does not stay in the same place due to the earth's rotation.

Bass, were you using autofocus? Probably should try manual focus. A small image in a dark sky may not allow enough information for autofocus to work.

Pat

Yes, I tried both autofocus and manual focus.

I was using the self timer so I wouldn't get any shake, which I believe from reading my (new) manual turns off the shake reduction, but that might have been an issue too.

-- Bass

Bass - A few notres:

-- Set the camera on manual and lens to F/8 or F/11, then takes a series of photos from like 1/300s to 1 second. I think it will help clear up what you should be using to get what you want.
-- Exposing for a full moon and the landscape that it lights is probably beyond the range of any DSLR. The moon is too bright to show detail in both itself, and the landscape. You can treat it a bit like the sun and use multiple exposures, or GNDs. Partially lit moons are a little different, but still tough.
-- The UV filter is not at all necessary, and could lose you some resolution.
-- Gene suggested no shutter speed longer than 1/125. However, I have taken good shots of the moon at up to a couple of seconds or so. In that amount of time the moon hasn't moved enough to lose detail if it's not frame filling.

Finally, this is a pretty good reference page for this stuff.

Try manual focus and manual exposure at 1/125 at f8.0 with an ISO of 200. This is close to what Gene recommended and it has worked for me. I may wind up with a slightly different exposure, but this should get you very close.

Dave, the K10D works much better on a tripod when you turn the shake reduction off. I've seen a big difference between sharp images and so so images depending on whether it's turned off or on.

Instead of using the self timer, you can get a remote release that works very well from both the front and the back of the camera.

Ok, once you have your moon exposure correct, try this. Compose your shot for the other items you want in the shot. Figure out the exposure you need for this and forget about the moon becoming a white ball. Take a shot and then without moving the camera, take a shot again exposing for the moon using the exposure you figured out earlier. Try to do all this rapidly so the moon will be pretty much in the same place for both images. Do this several times so you get multiple images of both landscape and moon. Now you are ready for photoshop. Carefully copy the properly exposed moon from the one photo and paste it over the over-exposed moon with the properly exposed landscape. Voila!!! You now have the image you could see but the camera could not produce in one shot!! You may have to do a little more photoshoping of your images since the properly exposed landscape may have a brighter background surrounding the moon image because of the burnout. Messing around with your images, you should be able to figure out what to do with each image before the copy and paste. Maybe even copy the landscape to the "good" moon image with a mask around the moon so you don't mess it up! There is a way!! You should be very pleased with the end result. This worked out well for me with a clock tower at dusk that had a very bright clock dial. The resulting image matched what my eyes could see!

Troup