- Photos of the moon can often turn out disappointing.
- During Tuesday's supermoon and partial lunar eclipse, there are ways to capture great photos.
If you've ever taken a picture of a big, bright full moon and been disappointed with the pale, tiny object glowing in your photo, you're not alone.
Professional astrophotographers use telescopes, high-powered lenses, and expensive cameras to produce incredible images of the sun, moon, and stars.
But even if you don't have a digital camera or extensive photography experience, there are a few steps you can take so your photos capture the brilliance of the night sky.
Moreover, Tuesday is a perfect time to test these skills because a beautiful full, harvest supermoon will rise above the eastern horizon around 7 p.m. local time.
Here are some mistakes you may be making while photographing the moon and how to fix them, according to two professional astrophotographers.
Mistake 1: Taking photos at the wrong time
"The moon can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be to photograph. It just depends on what kind of photo you want to get," astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy told Business Insider.
If you want to capture how large the moon looks, take photos at moonrise. That's when the moon is closest to the horizon, and you can include trees or buildings for context and scale.
When the moon is overhead, it's harder to get other features in your shot. "You don't have that context, so it appears a little bit smaller," McCarthy said. The silver lining is you can get better detail because you're shooting through less atmosphere and the photos will be clearer.
Tuesday's harvest supermoon will rise right around the same time as sunset, making it an especially great opportunity for some phone shots. Taking photos closer to sunset gives you more lighting compared to later at night, which will make taking a cellphone picture easier.
"My recommendation is, if you are limited with your tools and just using your phone, try to shoot the supermoon early," McCarthy said.
You might notice that it can be difficult to keep multiple objects — like the moon and buildings — in focus. But that's not necessarily a bad thing: "Sometimes it's kind of cool if the moon's the only thing that's sharp, and there's a city landscape that's kind of blurred a little bit," astrophotographer Jon Carmichael said.
But if you really want everything to appear in focus, you can also try taking separate pictures of the moon in focus and the buildings in focus and editing them together later, he said.
Mistake 2: Not using a tripod
Even steady hands can shake a little when taking photos. Setting up a tripod can make a big difference, Carmichael said.
"If you're looking for the sharpest shot possible, you'd be surprised at how easy it is for the photo to turn out blurry" without one, he said.
The tripod doesn't need to be fancy, he added. Even a basic yet sturdy one for smartphones should still allow you to capture a clearer shot.
Mistake 3: Not editing your photo
Sometimes our photos just don't live up to what we're seeing in the sky. "There's what you see, what the camera sees, and then there's what's actually there, and those things can be different," McCarthy said.
For instance, when the moon is on the horizon, it may appear orange or yellow, but that brilliant color can be difficult to capture in a photo.
McCarthy recommends underexposing your photos, which can help capture the color you're seeing. Many built-in phone apps will let you change the exposure by tapping or dragging the screen. Try and strike a balance so you don't make the rest of your image too dark.
Then, play around with the image in editing software with something like Photoshop's curves tool to make the color more saturated.
Also, if you're feeling slightly more ambitious, you can stack multiple photos. McCarthy does this in a tool called AutoStackkert! to sharpen the image and bring out finer details than are visible in a single photo.
Tips for shooting the moon with a smartphone
Just pointing and shooting on your smartphone may not give you the look you want. "It will try to apply automatic settings to get the shot," McCarthy said of your phone's camera.
You need to control the exposure. Since the sun is illuminating the moon, it provides a bright source of light. "That's why the moon tends to get blown out in photos a lot, especially photos taken with a cellphone," he said. The image turns out overexposed: too bright and with a lot of details lost.
When properly exposed, you can see features like the dark, blotchy lunar maria, McCarthy said, where basaltic lava once flowed. Sometimes just tapping on the moon in your camera app will help give you the right exposure. Holding down the screen for a few seconds also lets you adjust the exposure on some Samsung phones while iPhone users can use the sun icon as a slider.
You can also try a couple of iPhone apps that Carmichael recommends, like Camera+ (free) and ProCamera ($17.99). These can help you make manual adjustments to get the right exposure for your image.
Business Insider's Les Shu, who spent years reviewing photography equipment, recommends an app that can shoot long-exposure photography, such as the DeepSkyCamera app (free), for Android phones. The technique helps create sharper images.
Finally, both McCarthy and Carmichael said to use optical zoom instead of digital zoom. It varies by phone model, but in general, you'll want to keep the zoom below 5X so it's using the camera lens instead of software. With higher zooms, "you're basically having the phone enlarge the photo," Carmichael said, instead of truly zooming in.
Tips for shooting the moon with a camera
With digital cameras, Carmichael recommends taking photos manually. This lets you control the amount of light hitting the camera's sensor.
"If you're shooting in any kind of auto setting, then you're making the camera decide for you," Carmichael said.
When shooting manually, you'll want to play around with a few different settings on your camera including the aperture size, shutter speed, and ISO:
- The aperture size is how wide the camera's shutter opens.
- The shutter speed is how quickly the shutter opens.
- The ISO is the camera sensor's sensitivity to light.
In general, Carmichael suggests starting out with making adjustments to your aperture setting, using a fast shutter speed and low ISO.
"The higher that ISO goes, the noisier and grainier the photo will end up being," Carmichael said. If the photos look blurry, you can bump up the ISO, he said.