Photography

MuseRider

(34,111 posts) Thu Mar 14, 2019, 01:50 PM Mar 2019

Question, I hope it is not a silly question but

I woke up last night and saw the moon slowly going through some clouds with the reflection on my pond and took a few pictures. Of course, it was blowing a gale with pelting rain so I took it with my phone, an excellent camera, knowing through the window it would be strange but maybe cool. I used the Night Sight to avoid the flash. The pictures were as I expected, awful but interesting with some reflections that occasionally make a cool shot. I noticed one thing that was really odd that I cannot explain. The moon was full in all 3 photos. It was not a full moon last night. Is there some kind of explanation for this so I can avoid it in the future? I have taken horrible pictures of the moon for years always trying to get better and this is the first time I have seen anything like this. I wondered if the Night Vision feature used some kind of predictions to make it possible to get shots without flash and this is the result of one. Hmmmmm.

3 replies

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Question, I hope it is not a silly question but (Original Post) MuseRider Mar 2019 OP

That has happened with every picture Control-Z Mar 2019 #1

Huh. OK I just went through a bunch of photos MuseRider Mar 2019 #2

My guess, based on not seeing your picture. ManiacJoe Mar 2019 #3

Control-Z

(15,682 posts)

1. That has happened with every picture

Reply to MuseRider (Original post)

Thu Mar 14, 2019, 02:35 PM

Mar 2019

I've tried to take of the moon with my cell camera. It's a pretty good camera but just not good enough to sense the actual shape of the moon. I've tried every possible setting.

MuseRider

(34,111 posts)

2. Huh. OK I just went through a bunch of photos

Reply to Control-Z (Reply #1)

Thu Mar 14, 2019, 02:55 PM

Mar 2019

(I wish I could stop taking pictures of every darned thing that catches my eye) and I did see that most of mine were full moon shots but I think that was intentional since I can never get one I like but I kept going back and I have some, most are full, that are not full moon pictures. If I had a photo place I would post them but I never got a new one after Photobucket did whatever it was that it did. I have maybe 10 or 15 that are quarter or half moons. I will have to experiment with this Night Sight thing. It is amazing what you can get without a flash to reflect back at you.

Thanks for your response. I will be on the lookout for this happening. Keeping track now......

ManiacJoe

(10,136 posts)

3. My guess, based on not seeing your picture.

Reply to MuseRider (Original post)

Fri Mar 15, 2019, 06:09 PM

Mar 2019

The bright moon is a very small object in the large dark sky.

The basic mode of the camera's auto-exposure system is to make the average brightness a medium gray. In this case it means making all that dark sky brighter than it should be thus causing the already bright moon to be greatly over-exposed.

There are multiple exposure/shooting modes that can be tried with the newer cameras. One thing that helps with many of the newer cameras is to tap on the object to focus on (this moon in this case) which also causes the exposure system to give that object a priority in the exposure computation.

If your camera app support it, going into manual exposure mode will give you control over everything.

Regardless, this type of photography is almost always helped by a tripod.

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