New to Digital SLR - Canon 5D

I was in Malibu recently and we had beautiful moon risings. I am new to my Canon SLR and its software. I took tripod based exposures. Great pictures but some setting left the nightime looking like day and the orange moon white. Is it the white balance or some other setting I need to control for these shots? I also have tried evening shawdows with lighted subjects and the same adjustment happens. Any tips are appreciated.

Welcome to the forums. It sure sounds like a white balance problem. I find that in low-light, the auto white balance seems to not be especially accurate. Did you shoot RAW or jpeg? What editing tools do you have available (photoshop, etc?) This is pretty easy to correct.

-Scott

tcandt wrote:
I was in Malibu recently and we had beautiful moon risings. I am new to my Canon SLR and its software. I took tripod based exposures. Great pictures but some setting left the nightime looking like day and the orange moon white. Is it the white balance or some other setting I need to control for these shots? I also have tried evening shawdows with lighted subjects and the same adjustment happens. Any tips are appreciated.

Sounds like an exposure problem. The light metering system will strive to make the brighness values within the metered area average out to medium. If you are shooting a contrasty subject with Evaluative metering (which measures the entire image area), especially one in which most of the image area is dark and a relatively smaller area is bright - the moon or setting sun or perhaps a spotlighted performer - the camera will set an exposure which will lighten the dark area and thus overlighten (overexpose) the bright area. The solution is to limit the area being metered by using Partial or Spot metering on the section of the picture where it is most important to retain true values, or alternatively to reduce exposure with Exposure Compensation or Manual.
Elie

tcandt wrote:
I was in Malibu recently and we had beautiful moon risings. I am new to my Canon SLR and its software. I took tripod based exposures. Great pictures but some setting left the nightime looking like day and the orange moon white. Is it the white balance or some other setting I need to control for these shots? I also have tried evening shawdows with lighted subjects and the same adjustment happens. Any tips are appreciated.

Posting examples is really needed. You'll get more help in the EOS Camera forum instead of here.

Without samples, I side with tzalman about exposure being the core of the problem. Sounds like you would benefit from better understanding of what the metering point is, which is used by the camera, and how to 'compensate' the scene accordingly. Most basic...the camera tries to take the metering point and render it 18% grey. It is trying to 'turn night into day' exactly as you are putting it! If that means the moon gets overexposed, the meter doesn't know. If the moon gets overexposed, the moon gets whiter in its rendition.

Thanks, all. I need to learn more about digital photography and the camera.

These were jpeg. I have the Canon software that came with the camera, Digital Photo Professional.

Well, now that the vacation is over, make sure you have gone through the manual many times. Its a boring but essential step to getting the pictures come out the way you want them.

tcandt,
I also agree with tzalman in that it was probably an exposure problem. The moon can give quite a bit of light surrounded by very dark areas.
Oh... and it probably has nothing to do with Digital, the same could happen with film

John_B wrote:
tcandt,
I also agree with tzalman in that it was probably an exposure problem. The moon can give quite a bit of light surrounded by very dark areas.
Oh... and it probably has nothing to do with Digital, the same could happen with film

Moonlit scenes can be made to look just like daylight scenes with the right exposure. The key in getting what you want out of the camera is understanding how the exposure system works - and to bracket exposures under difficult circumstances.

John is absolutely correct that it has nothing to do with digital, but is simply a function of photography.

Mark