Super Moon How-to...

I know that a lot of people know how to take a shot of the moon, but for those that are excited about the Super Moon but are slightly apprehensive about it all, here's a pretty good video from Tony Northrup showing how to go from taking it, to making it look good in Photoshop. I remember my first moon shots were really disappointing, I didn't have this information, I wish I had.

https://www.facebook.c​om …/videos/1266539​676721276/

I will say that he doesn't mention a tripod, I would definitely use one if you have it, if you don't, brace your forearms so that you won't get too much movement.

Randy

In Tony & Chelsea's video, he suggests using an exposure such as 1/80th & f/8 at ISO 100. That will result in a fairly bright moon -- it's overexposed by a little over 1 stop (probably about one and a third). But since that's still within the dynamic range of just about every digital camera you'll still get a useful exposure at those settings.

We think of the moon as being bright because we see something lit by daylight during the night. To our eyes it seems very bright. In terms of true brightness it only reflects about 12% of the sunlight that strikes the surface (astronomers use the term "surface albedo" or just "albedo" to refer to the reflectivity of an object. The moon's value is .12 (12%) That's roughly the same as worn asphalt (not freshly laid asphalt) -- so it's fairly dark.

There is a guideline for the moon that works extremely well based on f/11... at f/11 the shutter speed can be the inverse of the ISO. That means at ISO 100 you can set the shutter speed to 1/100th sec. At ISO 200 set the shutter speed to 1/200th sec... and so on. This works if you use f/11. If you use a different f-stop such as f/8 then you have to trade stops of exposure. So if you could use f/11, ISO 100 and 1/100th sec but you'd rather shoot at f/8 then you've opened up the aperture by 1 full stop so you need to reduce the time the shutter is open by the same amount (1 full stop) and that would put you at 1/200th (Tony shot at 1/80th).

This guideline actually has a name (I didn't make this up)... it's called the "Looney 11 Rule".