I woke up late last night, glanced out my window, and I saw a lovely scene with the moon about to set over Miami. I like the moon (but so bright!!!), disliked the clouds (but they dimmed the moon a little), and loved the reflections on the water. I worked with lots of settings to bring out the boats in Biscayne Bay, and cropped on both sides, thinking I cut the image down to the parts I liked the most.
I realized later on, that I forgot how to do bracketing on the D780, but by the time I figured that out, what I enjoyed the most was gone because the moon appeared dimmer. Photo was captured with my old Nikon 80 - 200, which was already on the camera.
There were constant clouds around the moon, which I tried to show in the photo. I would have preferred to get a proper exposure for the moon, but then the rest of the image would be gone. A control point helped make it just slightly darker. A black background around the image shows me the image much better, so I switched DxO to “night mode”. By using Smart Lighting a little but more, I found I could bring out more detail in the boats in Biscayne Bay, but that seemed to detract from the overall scene. Raising it to 84 got this view, which I suspect might be better:
Photographing the moon is the same as photographing a white wall on a slightly cloudy day - same exposure -Sunny 16 rule minus 1 stop.
In other words, 1/100 sec @ f/11, 100 ISO. So, allowing for +2EV for the moon’s brightness, with your settings, you are around 8 stops over-exposed.
The only ay I know to cope with this is to take two shots - one for the moon and another for the rest but with a much lower ISO and, definitely, a much smaller aperture than f2.8.
It is ** imperative** that you expose for the brightest subject and recover shadow detail.
DxO software doesn’t have a “night mode”. That is part of the forum software.
Here is my attempt, with which I am not at all satisfied…
