Photos by Don Smith/Moon_Rising-01.jpg
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Full Moon Rising Photograph: Photograph of the moon rising over a small mountain in San Simeon, California; shot with the Olympus C-3030 digital camera using a Kenko KUT-300Hi 3.0x telephoto lens. Digital Photography Tips and Tricks: The moon is extremely hard to shoot digitally, usually the contrast ratio is too high; one thing you can do is shoot the moon early evening or morning or like this photo, at dusk. A telephoto lens is a good idea if you have one; all moon shots should be made from a tripod because of the long exposure time needed and at long distances all movement is amplified. The problem is when you press your camera button the camera shakes; this camera has a remote control which I use when shooting telephoto, you can get the same result using your cameras' self timer.
Other Good Digital Photography Tips
for taking pictures of the moon:
- Shoot at as high a resolution as your digital camera will take.
- Digital pictures of the full moon will most often just look like a white featureless dot on a black background; shoot the moon when it is more or less than full; you hopefully can get a little detail on the moon face.
- Bracket your exposures so you can hopefully get the best exposure, which is tricky at best.
- Get some landscape or other foreground like some trees in your moon photo, it will give the photograph some interest and perspective.
- Consider using black and white mode if your camera has one; you can capture greater detail in black and white with a digital camera; you always the option to add and change colors using post production software like Photoshop.