I took a few more moon pictures tonight, and they are all overexposed.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

I took them exactly the same way I did last night, although with the time change, it was later in the day. The sky was darker, a bit. I will post tonight's first, and then last night's.

What am I doing wrong? How do I fix this? I'm using the auto no flash setting, just as I did last night.

Tonight's picture:



And for comparison, last night's:

[dballance]

1. I really need to practice nighttime photos

I got a prime lens. Now I just need to use it.

[Fumesucker]

2. The Moon is lit as brightly as a sunny day, when it's in a dark sky it's a very high contrast object

The large area of dark sky in the picturre is fooling the auto exposure system in your camera into thinking the Moon is not as bright as it is.. The blue sky in the second picture is much brighter and the Moon is therefore a lower contrast object in it so the auto exposure wasn't fooled, or at least not as much.

Try turning your exposure control down as far as it can go or put the camera in manual mode and shoot at about 1/200 sec 200 ISO and F10 and then adjust speed or aperture for brightness according to what the picture looks like.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Thank you! This is helpful.

[Major Nikon]

6. Pretty much all cameras today have a histogram function

This article describes how to use the histogram to get a proper moon exposure.

http://thecareyadventures.com/blog/2011/how-your-cameras-histogram-can-help-improve-your-photo-31-days-to-better-photography/

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. I'm sure mine does.

This may be a more advanced lesson than I'm ready for, but I will keep this in mind as I learn.

[ManiacJoe]

3. The small bright moon in the large dark sky

is fooling the auto-exposure system, which is trying to make all that dark sky a nice medium gray.

The moon is actually in the bright sunlight and needs to be shot as such, but this usually means you need to do a manual exposure.

For daylight sunny photos there is the old "sunny 16" rule: aperture at f/16, shutter speed of 1/ISO.

Similarly, there is the "lunar 11" rule for shooting the moon: aperture at f/11, shutter speed of 1/ISO. Personally I find the f/11 to be a bit dark, so I tend to go a little closer to f/8.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. I appreciate your help! Thank you.

[ohheckyeah]

9. the lunar rule

is what I was taught and I agree that it's too dark. The best moon shots, imo, are taken during the day if it's visible.

[rdking647]

8. ive shot a ton of moon pictures

heres what i tend to do

first i use the spot metering mode on my camera to see what aperature/fstop it would use

then i switch to manual mode
dial in the recommended settings i noted before but underexpose by anywhere from 1/2 stop to a stop and a half.

i tend to take a few bracketed shots