Night digital camera shots

[Let'sgoflying!]

Its time to learn how to make some decent pics at night using the digital camera.
Its a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS

I want to shoot the rising full moon against distant landscape features, tomorrow night.

I tried a bunch tonight with the following settings and got a lot of blurry moon blobs, and little indication of the hills in front.
night
landscape
flash killed
zoomed way in,
zoomed all the way out.

Or you might say 'forget it', it won't work.
can post samples if helpful

 

[vontresc]

what you need is a tripod, and a remote release. The shutter times needed for a well exposed night shot pretty much preclude shooting the photo while holding the camera. In a pinch you can just set the camera on a rock car etc.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

i have a small tripod, Pete - and timer.

 

[Lawreston]

It was a little overcast on my way home one night, but it you look carefully you can see some of the finest ships to (later) sail in the U.S. Navy fleet. Bath Iron Works, as is said, "Bath built is Best built." (Henning will agree)

HR

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

I think I need to figure how to prolong the exposure time to get more detail in the landscape....without getting the moon overexposed.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

You may consider also using the 10 second timer that's probably built into the camera. It's commonly used to delay taking a picture for ~10 seconds so the person operating the camera can get into the picture but it works good for stepping clear of the camera as well so you don't shake it during long exposures.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

lyes, will try timer + tripod and I found in the manual a way to increase shutter times.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

I think I need to figure how to prolong the exposure time to get more detail in the landscape....without getting the moon overexposed.

I suspect that you can't. Unless you take two pictures and do some photoshop - like most pictures you see with a full moon. FWIW one real popular image of the moon seen in advertising and stuff is an image taken by the astronauts of Apollo 11 that shows a view of the moon that can't be seen from earth.

Also, without a real long lens, the moon will look like a speck in the picture as well.

 

[fgcason]

I think I need to figure how to prolong the exposure time to get more detail in the landscape....without getting the moon overexposed.

Won't work without some additional tricks.

The moon is a sunlit object just like taking a picture of an airplane on the ramp in the middle of a sunny afternoon - even if the moon shot is at midnight. Something like ISO100 f8 1/400th or ISO100 f16 1/125. Add more exposure time and it'll blow out the moon.
The terrain is something like ISO100 f3.5 2sec-10sec or whatever you're trying to accomplish.
The sky is just black or stars.

IOW, in auto mode, either the terrain will be ok and the moon will be blown our or if you fool with settings enough, the moon will be ok and everything else will be seriously dark.

You have to balance the terrain and moonlight light somehow. post processing is the easiest once you get terrain and moon pictures. For a single shot, the best option is to shoot at dusk after the moon rises while the terrain is still somewhat bright. FWIW, a lot of the really good night pictures with terrain are usually done at dusk or a bit afterward, not at full night.

3x optical zoom won't get you a lot of resolution on the moon. It's kind of a big bright dot in the distance. Digital zoom is total nonsense.
A shutter release or a timer is mandatory lest you shake the camera like crazy.


Methinks you're going to need a bigger boat.

 

[mantakos]

At night, you typically have lit objects (city lights) and an environment that's reflecting whatever light is striking it. This is typically too much of a range to capture in one exposure.

One trick is to do "night" photography at dusk, while there's still a little ambient sunlight reflecting off the sky, typically very blue, to help light the terrain a bit, to bring it closer to the lights. Other than that, you're probably looking at merging two images in post-processing.

The old-school alternative might be to use a long exposure, and use a piece of cardboard, or something, to cover up the sky after a brief exposure, keeping the board moving around a bit to prevent hard edges from showing on the exposure, sort of like "dodging" in the darkroom. There are also gradient neutral density filters that help to reduce the exposure in the sky, as compared to the ground.

Really, though, these days, this kind of thing is typically done via Photoshop magic.
-harry

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

I suspect that you can't. Unless you take two pictures and do some photoshop - like most pictures you see with a full moon. FWIW one real popular image of the moon seen in advertising and stuff is an image taken by the astronauts of Apollo 11 that shows a view of the moon that can't be seen from earth.

Here is the Apollo 11 image frequently used - about the left 1/3 of the surface seen in picture can't be seen from earth.

 

[mikea]

Henning!

 

[Teller1900]

The tripod and 10 second timer are what I use for low light shots. There's just no way to hold steady enough for a long exposure, and even just the little bit that the camera shakes when you push the trigger will ruin a picture if you don't use the timer.

My best example:
All three taken within a minute or two of eachother.
1. Long exposure, but handheld.
2. Short exposure (this is about how the scene looked to the naked eye) and still handheld.
3. Long exposure with the camera on the ground (lens tilted up using the shoulder strap) and the 10 second timer. The overall lighting is better, there's little to no blur, but the cabin lights in the plane in the foreground are over exposed. This is probably the same problem you are having with the moon, and there's simply not much that can be done about it absent an ND filter or Photoshop.

 

[inav8r]

The other issue, I've found, is that if you need exposure lengths longer than ~6 seconds when shooting the moon your image will blur - cuz it's moving.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

Oh well at least we had a lot of fun even if the pics were impossible. Here is what we were dealing with:

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Oh well at least we had a lot of fun even if the pics were impossible. Here is what we were dealing with:

HEY! Not bad.

Except that is a picture of the moon as seen from earth.

 

[Henning]

Its time to learn how to make some decent pics at night using the digital camera.
Its a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS

I want to shoot the rising full moon against distant landscape features, tomorrow night.

I tried a bunch tonight with the following settings and got a lot of blurry moon blobs, and little indication of the hills in front.
night
landscape
flash killed
zoomed way in,
zoomed all the way out.

Or you might say 'forget it', it won't work.
can post samples if helpful

Tripod, or push it against a wall. Typically you will also have an "ISO" adjustment in one of the menus, the higher the number, the faster (and lower quality) the image capture will be. The further you zoom out the less shake will show. Old rule of thumb was for hand holding, you want to be shooting at a shutter speed faster than the focal length of the lens in mm, ie, if you had a 50 mm lens, your minimal steady speed was 1/60th of a second.

 

[Henning]

Henning!

LOL, Houston Ship Channel at night, worked assist tugs there for McAllister years ago.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

day before full moon.