Landscape in the moonlight
For a while now, I have been wanting to take some photos that are illuminated by moonlight. With the recent full moon at Easter, I had the inclination at last to give it a go.
I spent around 3 hours experimenting with different exposures between midnight and 3am. As it was more of an experimental session, my focus was not so much on finding a good landscape but just to test exposures. Hunting for a landscape for next time will come later.
Where was it taken?
Off the balcony at my mother’s house where I was staying over Easter. It was taken at about 145am.
What settings did you use?
Manual. Focus was set to infinity. ISO was varied between 100 and 1600 – this shot was 400. Image was shot at 10mm and f8. Exposure was 1452 seconds (just over 24 minutes).
What gear did you use?
Canon 20D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens, Canon timer remote, and tripod.
Why did you compose the shot as you did?
I wanted to strike a balance between the ground and the night sky. I wanted to give at least the bottom third of the frame to the landscape illuminated by the moon, and use two thirds of the frame for star trails.
What post production work have you done on the shot?
Nothing significant. Removed some sensor dust spots and used luminance noise reduction to reduce the ISO noise.
What were you hoping to achieve with the shot?
To see if it was possible to expose a shot that creates the appearance of daytime, with star trails in the sky. The moon is a better light source than I had anticipated!
What did you do well?
I think I managed to create a reasonably balanced exposure that showed the movement of the stars, yet created the appearance of daylight. Using the relationship between ISO, aperture and shutter speed, I was able to adjust the ISO and aperture to generate a suitable shutter speed to turn stars into star trails
How could you have improved it?
Finding a more attractive landscape. For testing purposes the location worked fine, the trick would be to find better terrain. Interesting geological formations would likely be a good place. In hindsight if longer star trails were required, it might have been possible to use a graduated ND filter to reduce the reflected moonlight from the landscape.
Anything else?
Another point to note is the impact that focal length has on the size of star trails. You need really long exposures to generate significant star trails with a wide angle lens. This is why I needed around 25 minutes at 10mm, but could generate similar length trails at 24mm with far shorter exposures. But the joy of wide angle is that you can take much more in.
This was taken a few days after full, it may be interesting to see how the lighting dynamic changes say around half moon? For example, there will be far less light, and hence it might be possible to use far longer exposures as it won’t overexpose the foreground.
It might also be possible to time shots when there are a few bright planets in the sky – Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – so that their movement is in contrast to the star trails.