In the last installment of Quick Tips for Photographers we talked about Shooting the Moon. Well I’ve got another great tip for you to make even better images of the moon.

Make the Moon Look Really Big

Most people automatically shoot images of the moon with really wide angle lenses. The natural assumption is that a great Landscape image will look even better if it includes the moon. This is true, but the thing is, the moon is really far away and if you shoot it with a wide lens, it’s going to look really small. You’re far better to use the longest lens you’ve got. This will allow you to take advantage of a principle called Telephoto Compression; this is where distant objects appear to be closer, and larger, than they really are when they are magnified

So how do you make this work with the moon?

1. Figure out when you need to be at your chosen destination so that you see the Full Moon when it is near the horizon. I prefer to do this at sunrise or sunset so that the light of the moon is nicely balanced with the landscape around it. Note that for every Full Moon there will be at least 2, and sometimes 3, opportunities when the rising or setting moon coincides with the rising or setting sun. You can use TimeandDate.com to figure out when the next one will be.
2. Find a really scenic vista that you can see unobstructed from a long way away.
3. Back up a long way so that you can fill the frame appropriately with the main subject (other than the moon), and still have room to include the moon.
4. Arrive plenty early so you have time to get your gear set up in advance of the rising or setting moon, and so that you can change positions if you don’t have the moon perfectly aligned with your main subject.
5. Make plenty of images as the sun and the moon rise and set. The light will be perfect for only a few minutes for each opportunity.
6. Be prepared for the weather to totally bust you more often than not. I honestly try to make moon images almost every month, and in the last year I’ve only been successful 3 times. That’s just how it goes as a landscape shooter. Sometimes the weather cooperates, sometimes it doesn’t.

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!

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.

Almost every new SLR camera shipped in the last few years has included a feature known as “Live View”. For Point and Shooters it has been a given that you would be able to see a live image of your intended subject before you squeeze the shutter, but for digital SLR’s it has always been a little bit more complicated.

The thing is, there’s a darn mirror inside the camera that gets in the way, and it has to be moved before the camera sensor can see the same scene that the lens sees. It took the manufacturers a few years to figure out how to make it all work elegantly (in fact it’s still not perfect because autofocus performance takes a big hit in live view mode, but that’s a subject for another article). In the mean time SLR shooters never got used to having live view on the back of their cameras, and it’s one of those features that gets used very rarely (almost never) by most serious photographers.

Here are 5 reasons why you should use Live View for landscape photography:

1. Bigger Viewfinder: Let’s face it, the viewfinder in your SLR is small. Even if you’ve got one of those fancy-pants professional cameras that shows 100% of the image that the sensor sees (most non-pro SLR’s only show 90-95% of the scene), it’s still very small. With a bigger view you can get better compositions and more easily see the distractions and annoying backgrounds that you might not notice otherwise. Simply put, bigger is better baby!
2. Testing Critical Focus: While in live view mode you can zoom the image on the LCD (typically 5x or 10x) to get a much better idea of what you are actually focusing on. This is particularly helpful for macro photography, but it’s also great for landscapes.
3. Stronger Compositions: The image displayed on the LCD during Live View typically includes grid lines to help you compose your image. These lines can help you check that your horizons are straight and level and that your trees and buildings are vertical. They can even help you improve your composition by clearly showing guidelines for compositional rules of thumb such as the “Rule of Thirds.”
4. White Balance Preview: When you change the white balance setting in your camera, the image in your viewfinder doesn’t change, so you really can’t be sure how it’s going to look. Fortunately the image on the LCD changes instantly to show how your white balance affects the image. Sure, you can change the white balance in software (such as Adobe Lightroom) later (if you shoot RAW), but why not get it right in the camera instead? I find this feature to be invaluable when I’m trying to decide if I really have a good image in front of me…
5. Exposure Simulation and/or Live Histogram: For some users the single biggest reason to use Live View is for the exposure simulation (the live preview image in the LCD will automatically adjust based on the exposure settings to display the brightness of the final image). Alternatively you could simply choose to show a live histogram (which would also represent the final image rather than what you’re seeing on the screen) overlaid on the live image. Both of these features are very useful for preventing blown highlights or underexposed images. You can even use both at the same time.

There are many other great reasons to use live view for all types of photography. These are just a few of the best reasons that are most applicable to landscape shooters. Do you use live view? Please leave a comment telling me about your experiences with it… If you haven’t used it before then you should definitely give it a try on your next shoot!