Night photography tip: photograph the moon at twilight

Thursday 3 February 2022, 22:33 by Nando Harmsen | 4,493 views | 2 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

When there is a full moon, the photos appear on social media again. A disc with clear maria against a black background.

You have three days every four weeks to take this photo. But try photographing the full moon at twilight. It makes the photo much more interesting.

When the full moon is high in the sky, it is not difficult to take a photo of it. Choose a focal length of at least 400mm so that the moon appears large enough in the frame, set your ISO to 200 and use an aperture of f/8.

Anyone can photograph the moon this way. It is not difficult. Once you have done it, every next attempt will be exactly the same. Unless you can capture an aeroplane with it, as in this photo.
With around 1/250 second, you will have a successful photo. You do not even need a tripod if your lens or camera has image stabilisation. The photo will show a moon against a completely black background. Would it not be much more interesting to see some of your surroundings as well?

The full moon gives off a lot of light. That is why the settings mentioned above give you a well-exposed photo of the moon in the darkness of the evening and night. However, if you also want the surroundings to be properly exposed, you will need to use longer shutter speeds. The result is a moon that looks like a nocturnal sun.

If you want to photograph the full moon in the landscape, the moon will look like a nocturnal sun. If you expose for the moon, the landscape will no longer be visible at all.
Without tricks such as HDR, it is not possible to properly expose both the full moon and the surroundings in the dark. But there is another solution that is much more interesting than struggling with HDR techniques. Photograph the moon at twilight.

At twilight, the exposure of the moon and landscape is almost the same. It offers much more interesting photo opportunities than a full moon in a black sky.
At twilight, there is still enough light in the landscape. In addition, the full moon always rises around sunset, or sets around sunrise.

That means the light from the moon is almost the same as the light in the landscape. So with a single exposure, you can get both properly exposed in the photo.

The moon is also low on the horizon, making it easy to include interesting surroundings in the photo. Just give it a try.

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