Yellow Moon

[Tom Barry]

Over Austin, TX, Nov. 23, 2018. Canon 40D+Sigma 17-70mm:
Yellow Moon by tombarry975, on Flickr

[DanK]

To,

Sorry, but this doesn't do it for me. The moon is overexposed, showing no detail, and the rest of the image is underexposed, also showing almost no detail.

Moon shots are very difficult because the difference in brightness between the moon and the ground features is far too big for a camera to handle, except right at moonrise or moonset with a nearly full moon. Usually, the way that's handles is to merge two images, one exposed for the ground features and the second exposed for the moon.

Dan

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dan's comments. Just to shed a little more light on what he has written, I've imported your image into Adobe Camera Raw and taken a screen shot of what that shows:



The blue areas show where there is NO data, i.e. everything is black, which in this case, is most of the image. There are a few areas that show a touch of red, which are areas where you have blown out highlight details. If you look at the histogram at the top right hand corner and see the two small triangles that are white; this indicates that you have a capture that is outside the dynamic range of your camera's sensor.

From a technical standpoint, this is not a good image. We generally want to see textures in the shadow areas.

[Tom Barry]

I know, I know. We were on the way home from a Thanksgiving party and she insisted we go to the overlook and see the yellow moon. I told her I needed a tripod so I could take multiple shots or it wouldn't work, but she rules. I did what I could with it and she liked it. I thought I'd post it here and it got the reaction it deserved. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it...

[Geoff F]

Maybe worth working on two edits from the original file then carefully merging them together with layers and masking; particularly if you shot in Raw mode.

[JBW]

What Geoff said only maybe 5 shots each with an exposure adjustment say three adjustments own the moon and two on the rest.

[DanK]

Maybe worth working on two edits from the original file then carefully merging them together with layers and masking; particularly if you shot in Raw mode.

Certainly worth a try, but I would be surprised if much shadow detail is there to be recovered.

only maybe 5 shots each with an exposure adjustment say three adjustments own the moon and two on the rest.

The moon doesn't have a dynamic range that exceeds that of most cameras, so in my experience, a single exposure has always been enough for the moon itself. The setting is another matter. Urban night shots often have a dynamic range greater than the camera can handle, but how much greater, and therefore how many shots one needs, varies a lot. Also, in many cases, people doing urban night photography will let things like streetlights blow out, which reduces the number of shots one needs. For example, I was able to do this in a single shot because I was content to have a few of the windows and some of the reflections blown out:



All of which is a long-winded way of saying that two shots, one for the moon and one for the rest, might be sufficient, and if not, one for the moon and two for the rest would probably be fine. Just my guess.

[Tom Barry]

My basic problem was that by the time my wife decided we needed to go up there it was nearly pitch black and I didn't have a tripod. And the old 40D, while one of my favorite people-picture cameras, doesn't have a huge dynamic range. Had we gotten to the overlook 30 minutes earlier and prepared, it would have been no problem. If wishes were horses...

[Manfred M]

Maybe worth working on two edits from the original file then carefully merging them together with layers and masking; particularly if you shot in Raw mode.

With the amount of pure black I see in #3, I'd be very surprised to see a lot more detail in the raw data, so I'm not sure that this would work. The shot got the moon properly exposed, but most of the rest has crushed shadow detail.

[DanK]

And the old 40D, while one of my favorite people-picture cameras, doesn't have a huge dynamic range

While it's true that many newer cameras have a better dynamic range, I doubt that would have been sufficient in this case. And while I haven't used a 40D for night photography, I have done a fair amount with a 50D--which is close in age--and it was generally fine. The image I posted above was done with a 50D.