Challenge: How to do this properly?

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Hi everyone! The other night the moon was rising above this mountain, (in case you are curious, it is called the "cerro de la silla", it is the symbol of Monterrey), so I thought I would try to capture it. I tried with many different settings and could not get it as I wanted. At the end this is the best I achieved. I just could not find a balance between aperture and shutter speed in order to get the moon to be sharper. If I tried a faster shutter speed, it was too dark. Any ideas on how this could have been done?

Thanks!

It is tough, since I am sure the clouds were moving. This changes the whole light situation in shots like this. I think you have done very well with your image. If you boost the ISO you may be able to use faster shutter speed (at the expense of grain, though). I hear Nikon makes a camera body where ISO is ridiculously high, without much of an effect on the image as far as grain is concerned ...

The only reasonable way to do this and get a crisp sharp moon is through the use of some form of HDR. The moon is reflected sunlight and as such is extremely bright. The mountain, at night, is extremely dark. There are no settings on pretty much any camera that will get both properly exposed. What you need to do is take one shot to expose the mountains and take one shot to expose the moon and combine them in post processing either manually through the use of layers in something like Photoshop or Gimp or "automagically" through the use of HDR software which does it through tone mapping.

I hope this helps.

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Originally Posted by Iguanasan

The only reasonable way to do this and get a crisp sharp moon is through the use of some form of HDR. The moon is reflected sunlight and as such is extremely bright. The mountain, at night, is extremely dark. There are no settings on pretty much any camera that will get both properly exposed. What you need to do is take one shot to expose the mountains and take one shot to expose the moon and combine them in post processing either manually through the use of layers in something like Photoshop or Gimp or "automagically" through the use of HDR software which does it through tone mapping.

I hope this helps.

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Thank you Iguanasan. This makes sense.

I agree with Iggy here - HDR.
The only issue might be that clouds will move position between exposures so it's harder to predict if you'll appreciate the final blended outcome... My guess is you will tho.
If you do try - of course we wanna see the results. :)

What about using two photos, one exposed for the moon and another exposed for the sky and using masking layers to just bring the moon through?

If you cannot reshoot, try editing it. For the moon, use the oval tool and press shift alt and start from the center and drag until it selects the moon. You can fine tune by choosing select and transform selection to make the selection precise. Press ctrl H to hide the selection and use the clone tool with a small brush and clone from the inside of the moon towards the edge. Deselect. For the mountain, use the magic wand to select the mountain and press Q to enter quickmask. Go to filter and choose sharpen, sharpen edges and do this about 3 or four times to sharpen the edge of the mask. Press Q again to exit quickmask and press ctrl H again to hide selection and do the same, clone the mountain towards the edges.