zoom HELP

[themartuigan]

i was just outside a while ago. the moon is out and the stars were looking great. i tried to take a picture of the moon and the clouds surrounding it, but the camera does not capture it like i see it. what would i need to be able to photograph the nights sky, closer? please help me out, any advice would be great.
thanks

[readingr]

Can you be a bit more specific about the problems your getting? Is it blown out moon, not big enough in picture, no stars in the shot?

Post an example of the problem photo

Roger

[mwfanelli]

i was just outside a while ago. the moon is out and the stars were looking great. i tried to take a picture of the moon and the clouds surrounding it, but the camera does not capture it like i see it. what would i need to be able to photograph the nights sky, closer? please help me out, any advice would be great.
thanks

To get "closer" you will need a lens of higher focal length, a longer telephoto. You can get this with a new camera or by buying a telephoto extender lens to put on the front of your existing camera. I do not know if that will be enough.

FWIW, your brain makes the moon appear larger than it really is! The camera sees it for what it really is.

[SpeedingSphere]

I think he's talking about exposure problems between the stars, clouds, and the moon, and also about telephoto lenses.

The moon is so bright that it will under expose the stars and clouds, and the stars and clouds are so dim that if you expose for them, the moon will be over exposed.

the human eye is much more sophisticated than any camera sensor ever. it "exposes" properly for everything in its field of view, but a camera can only show exposures with about 6 stops difference. You have to give somewhere, either in highlights or dark tones.

You can multi-expose this shot and then recompose it in photoshop using layers and masks to remove parts of each image to compile them into one. Give that a shot, or post your image on here, and i'm sure one of us will do it for you if you're unsure.

I hope that answers your question

[another view]

Are you shooting film or digital - and if film, is it slide or negative (print) film? When you say that it "the camera doesn't capture it like you see it", that probably is the case and this is true in a lot of situations. Photography doesn't see the way your eye does, and that's part of the challenge and inspiration to making unique images.

The moon is much brighter than the clouds around it and really any form of photographic media (digital, film, etc) will not be able to handle that amount of contrast anywhere near as well as your eye will. Obviously it won't work in this case, but in other situations where there's too much contrast, try using fill flash to even out the light levels.