This is the next installment in my series of Quick Tips for photographers.

It seems that every photographer wants to have a great image of the moon in their collection. Why? Because it’s there! And because it’s cool!

Most people that set out to shoot the moon expect that it will be hard to do, that you will need to use long exposures, and maybe even a tripod. In short, they expect to have to shoot it like any other night time shot. Using a tripod is always a great idea if you want to make really sharp images, but for the moon it’s not strictly required. In fact, shooting the moon is more like a daytime shot rather than a night time shot.

Photographing the Moon

Although it may be counter-intuitive, the moon is actually very bright. We can only see the moon because it reflects the light of the sun. That means that the Sunny 16 Rule is actually a great starting point to make images of the moon.

The moon is not quite as bright as a sunny day, so you will probably want to add at least 1 stop of light to the exposure that you calculated using the Sunny 16 Rule to get it just right. So instead of 1/ISO at f/16, you might try f/11 instead.

Modified Sunny 16 Rule for Shooting the Moon:
Aperture = f/11
Shutter = 1/ISO

An equivalent exposure that I like to use for shooting the moon is:
f/8 @ ISO 200 and 1/400th of a second

I like these settings because ISO 200 provides a nice clean (noise-free) images for most modern cameras, and 1/400th is easily hand-holdable unless you are using very long lenses.

NOTE – if you want to zoom in tight on the moon then you will need to use an extremely long lens. In that case you will absolutely want to use an equivalent exposure that includes a very fast shutter speed.

For example, I occasionally use my 400mm lens with a 2x teleconverter to get an equivalent focal length of 800mm. In that case I want to ensure that I get at least 1/1000th of a second to get tack sharp images. To do so I will typically open up the aperture to f/5.6 and also increase my ISO to 400. Doing so allows me to use a shutter speed as fast as 1/1600th of a second.

An equivalent exposure for shooting the moon with long lenses:
f/5.6 @ ISO 400 and 1/1600th of a second

As in all exposure decisions you will want to salt to taste depending on your particular equipment and environment…

A final word on shooting the moon:

Most people that make images of the moon do so when the moon is full. That’s actually the most boring time to shoot the moon, because the entire moon is lit up and it ends up coming out flat and boring. The most interesting images of the moon are taken when only part of it is lit, which is about 1 week before or after the full moon. In this situation the moon is only partially lit which makes the texture from the craters on its surface really pop because the shadows behind them are visible.

This trick is also true for many other forms of photography.

If you want your subject to look interesting, only light part of it!

This is the next installment in my series of Quick Tips for photographers. This one is an oldie but a goodie…

Sometimes your camera will be confused by the lighting conditions around it. In those cases it’s always a good idea to have a feeling for a good starting point for what the correct exposure settings to use will be.

Way back in the olden days (before histograms and light meters were built into the camera), photographers had to do this in their heads, and they had to do it all the time. They developed lots of rules of thumb to help. Here’s one that you can used to determine the correct exposure on a bright sunny day.

The Sunny 16 Rule

On a bright sunny day, if you set your aperture (or F-stop) to f/16, then the shutter speed required to get a good exposure will simply be 1 / ISO.

Some modifiers for this rule:

• If you are at a white sandy beach or shooting in snow then you may need to stop down by 1 stop to cut glare and reflections.
• If your background is darker or there are important areas of the scene in the shade then you may need to open up by 1 stop to fill in the shadows.
• You may have to “salt to taste” to get an exposure that matches your creative expectation!

NOTE – If you need a refresher on Aperture, F-stop, Stop Down, or Open Up, then check out my earlier post on Apertures and F-stops.

For the Advanced Class

f/16 at 1/ISO should be considered to be your starting point, and you can always add salt to taste if you want to change the look of the image (Tip – use the histogram on your LCD to check your exposure). You can also use that exposure information to calculate a whole series of equivalent exposures depending on the creative decisions you want to make.

For example, if you want to blur the background then you might want to use f/2.8 instead of f/16. In this case you simply need to figure out how many full stops brighter f/2.8 is than f/16, and then take away that much light be increasing the shutter speed or decreasing the ISO.

Every time you move either the Aperture, the Shutter, or the ISO from one of the standard settings in the table above to the adjacent setting to the left of it, you are “Stopping Down” your exposure by 1 full stop, which means you will use half the light of the previous setting. As you move to the right you “Open Up” by 1 full stop, which means you will get twice as much light. If you Stop Down the aperture by one stop, then you must Open Up the Shutter or the ISO by one stop in order to maintain the equivalent exposure.

A practical example: Moving from f/16 to f/2.8 is 5 full stops more light. To achieve an equivalent exposure you would have to take away 5 stops. You could do that by Stopping Down the ISO or the Shutter. Changing the ISO from 3200 down to 100, or increasing the Shutter Speed from 1/4 sec up to 1/125th sec are equivalent moves.

NOTE – Modern cameras allow many more choices for Aperture, Shutter, and ISO. They generally allow adjustments in half, third, or even quarter stops. It is very important that you understand how much you have to change to affect your exposure by a full stop! And as always, practice makes perfect!

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This is the next installment in my series of Quick Tips for photographers.

New photographers often get confused about terms like Wider Aperture, smaller F-stop, Stopping Down, and Opening Up. So here is a series of explanations for what some of these terms mean.

The thing is, photographers that know this stuff just know it, and they don’t even have to think about it. When a new person comes onto the scene and they hear terms like Stop Down, Open Up, Fast Glass, and Maximum Aperture, they often have no idea what language is being spoken. It’s really not obvious what any of these terms mean, and it can be very confusing to figure it out unless someone explains it clearly and simply.

Here are some key points to remember:

• A small F-stop means a large aperture.
• A large F-stop means a small aperture.
• Large apertures (small F-stops) let in more light than small apertures, so you can use faster shutter speeds to get the same exposure.
• “Stopping Down” means to use a smaller aperture, which is a higher F-stop.
• “Opening Up” means to use a larger aperture, which is a smaller F-stop.
• “Fast Glass” means using lenses with a very low f-stop (such as f/2.8 or smaller) which let in lots of light. More light means faster shutter speeds, hence the term Fast Glass. Fast glass is good.
• “Maximum Aperture” means the largest aperture, or smallest F-stop, that a lens is capable of. See “Fast Glass” to figure out why this is important.

This can be very hard to remember until you’ve used your camera so much that it just comes natural to you and you don’t even have to think about it. For many people, simply memorizing the table above will be enough to make this all work flawlessly!

More Detail for the Advanced Class

For some people it helps to think about what the numbers mean. If you don’t want to know, just stop right here, and go back and finish memorizing the terms above!

The F-stop is really just a ratio between the size of the lens opening (called the aperture) and the focal length of the lens you are using. The size of the aperture is simply the focal length divided by the F-stop number.

The important part is that no matter what lens you are using, if you divide the focal length by 4, you will get a larger number than if you divide by 16; this means that at f/4 you will have a much larger aperture than at f/16, and therefore the lens will let in much more light at f/4 than at f/16.

For example, if you are using a 100 mm lens:
- At f/4 the size of the aperture is 100/4 = 25 mm
- at f/16 the size of the aperture is 100/16 = 6.25 mm

You can see that the aperture at f/4 is significantly bigger than at f/16, and therefore the lens will let in way more light at a smaller F-stop.

I’ve seen lots of talk about histograms in the blogosphere lately. I’ve been meaning to post some quick tips about using the histogram for quite awhile (because I get asked about it all the time), so seeing these other posts has prompted me to finally do so.

But wait, there’s more! I’ve actually taken this as an opportunity to to kick off a series of Quick Tip posts about photography that I will gradually release over the coming weeks. These are all based on a bunch of reminder notes that I’ve saved over the years that helped me remember some of the finicky little details about photography. These things aren’t always obvious to new users, and they really helped me out as I learned the craft. Fortunately they are also really easy things to share!

So here’s the first one…

Using a Histogram

NOTE – If you don’t know what an image histogram is, go to Wikipedia’s Histogram article first. In short, a histogram is simply a relative indicator of how much of your image is dark, or light, or somewhere in between.

• Right Side – Indicates the brightest parts of the image. If the curve touches the right side of the chart window then parts of the image may be pure white or overexposed.
• Left Side – Indicates the darkest parts of the image. If the curve touches the left side of the chart window then parts of the image may be pure black or underexposed.
• If the chart touches both sides of the chart window at the same time then the scene is very contrasty. You will have to choose to expose correctly for the dark parts of the image, the light parts of the image, or somewhere in between. But you can’t possible expose for everything at the same time. You could also consider shooting a bracket and blending the exposures in post (eg. shoot for HDR).
• If you want to “Move to the Left” (or make the image darker) then increase the shutter speed, increase the F-stop (which actually means to use a smaller aperture), or use a lower ISO setting.
• If you want to “Move to the Right” (or make the image brighter) then decrease the shutter speed, or decrease the F-stop (which actually means to use a larger aperture), or use a higher ISO setting.