Moon in frame - help please!

[hugeknot]

Hello
I often go out and take night HDRs. One thing I always fail at is taking a successful series of exposures with the moon in the frame. It requires a huge range of shots to expose for the land right down to exposing the moon properly. We are talking about 9 exposures. The problem is that the moon is always moving from one frame to the next.

Does anyone have any tips or techniques to get around this problem?

I have been more successful when shooting after dusk or just before dawn.

[tkbslc]

Since it is moving, there is no way to get it to be in the same place for all 9 frames considering they are long exposures. I would attempt to clone out the moon in the other 8 frames and just use the moon from the frame where it is exposed right. It will involve some photoshop work, but I think that is the only way.

The other way might be to shoot the HDR composite without the moon in the frame. Then shoot a shot of just the moon and use photoshop to drop the moon into the final image.

[justin240]

hey hugeknot, the moon is often pretty bright and takes a fast shutter speed to expose properly, watch your histogram and make sure you get one exposed right for your hdr. If you want more land exposed with the moon, you need to find the right moment when you can have some fill light (sunrise/sunset city lights) when you take your moon shot.

[hugeknot]

Thanks guys!