Shoot the Moon (How To)

From the 'You can always learn something new department'...

Like many photographers I often find myself on the receiving end of various photography-related questions:  how to do something, what equipment to buy, why something or other didn't work, and so on. This week there's been a full moon and a guy at my gym approached me to find out if there was a way to shoot the full moon without the surrounding sky becoming nothing but pure black. My first reaction was, No, there isn't, because the full moon is actually very bright, and it's many stops brighter than the surrounding night sky. My next thought was that it might be possible to get such a shot using a centre ND filter. These are normally used on ultra-wide lenses to offset the heavy vignetting such lenses can produce. But maybe (I thought) there's something similar that could be used to shoot the moon.

Well, it turns out there is no such beast. But there is a time-tested method to do exactly what the guy at my gym wants to do. It's called the 'black card method.'

Simply cut out some black art card into a small circle. Place your camera on a tripod and frame up your shot with the moon and any surrounding details. Then place the black card over the moon and fire your exposure. Keep the card there for about half the exposure time, moving it around slightly to avoid a hard edge, and then pull it away to expose the moon. And no your hand won't appear in the shot, because with a long night exposure it simply won't be in frame long enough to show up.

Pretty cool, huh? And simple. The moral is:  if you don't know something look it up. You'd be surprised how often this works.