First ever night shot...and I'm completely in the dark!

[steelerdirtfreak]

A couple of nights ago the moon finally made an appearance (we've had nothing but rain lately) and I decided to experiment with the new camera. I've been reading a lot on here and a few other places about night photography, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Obviously the result is not good (and as it was the first time I had ever tried something like this, I didn't expect it to be). Trouble now is that I have read so much that I am about confused and in the dark (bad pun absolutely intended!) about what adjustments/corrections to make to get a better shot.

For this, the exposure time was 0.77 sec. and was set at f/8. So what adjustments would y'all recommend trying to improve this?

[drg]

How did you meter and are you shooting Film or Digital? There are exposure tables available for film if you don't have a meter that can resolve that low a light EV. You cand just use a tripod and just keep setting the shutter longer and longer with the same Ap and see what you get.


From what you have said I'm guessing you are shooting digital, (the .77 shutter speed) and if so just keep playing until you find a good image. You may have to focus manually as well as most AF doesn't work too well when it really dark, unless you select the moon in this instance, as the focus point. Some AF doesn't like clouds as there's no good contrast "edge" for it to latch on to and focus.

Good luck and let us see your next results.

-CDP

[gahspidy]

The moon at night will almost always get blown out if leaving the setting up to your cameras meter. The cameras meter is compensating for the dark night sky and trying to overexpose the scene. You could try what drg suggested, or try spot metering right on the moon and use that as a starting point and bracket your shots up and down from that.