Misty Moon

[Diane_Miller]

In September several days before the full moon I had been trying for a time lapse of the rising moon behind some trees on the ridge east of us, but failed miserably as I was unable to get the trees in the right position. Then later, after dark, I stuck my head out to see if the garage door was closed and saw the moon was illuminating some fog rolling in, and broke fingernails getting the camera set up.

Specific Feedback Requested

All comments welcome!

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Canon R5, 100-500 at 300, ISO 2500, f/16 (to try to get a little focus on the moon), 1/5 sec. This was the first guess at proper exposure to not blow out the moon and was incredibly underexposed. I moved the tripod and changed to a wider zoom before I got the exposure right, but then I decided I liked the composition better on this one. I salvaged it as best I could in LR, then to PS for denoise and to try for a TK mask to lighten the sky a bit. I couldn’t find a lights mask that worked but a darks 4 or 5 inverted did the trick. Output that to a curve and managed to lighten the fog a bit without trashing it too much.

[Kris_Smith (Kristen M Smith)]

Intriguing for sure. Clearly I have to go play by moonlight someday. Whatever noise you had seems to be knocked back and I like the subtle shading with the reddish tones. Possibly you could pull up the highs a tiny bit more. It seems a little flat in the clouds/fog. A light touch for sure.

[Diane_Miller]

Thanks @Kris_Smith – here’s a slight tweak. Even the OP is bringing out the limitations of the very underexposed raw file. The dynamic range of the sensor was a limiting factor. I need to revisit the raw file and see if I can tweak out more tonal range but I’m doubtful.

The unadjusted raw file:

[Mark_Seaver]

Diane, this is nicely spooky and mysterious. I’m not sure that the extra brightness picked up in the redo does anything.

[Youssef_Ismail]

Diane, this has such a great mysterious feel to it. I like it.