Shooting A Night Skyline Shot with a Detailed Moon

Have you ever wanted to get a night skyline shot with the moon?  If you try to take a night shot with the detailed moon more than likely you will get an overexposed white circle rather than a detailed moon.  It is because night city shots need long exposures and a shot of the moon takes a very short exposure due to the moon being very bright.

The easiest way to achieve the shot that you are looking for is to take 2 different shots, on shot of the moon and the other of the night skyline and combine them in photo editing software like Photoshop.

The Night Skyline

First thing you need is to set your camera up on a tripod.  Using a wide angle lens (18mm-24mm). Set your camera to Aperture Priority Mode, chose f/11 or a larger f-stop and your camera will choose the shutter speed (which can be as little as 20 seconds or could be a few minutes depending on how dark the city is.  For this shot of the Lincoln Memorial, I used f/4 with a shutter speed of 1/2 second.

The Moon Shot

Put on your longest telephoto lens (ideally 200mm or more), put your camera on full manual mode and set your aperture to f/11 and your shutter speed to 1/250 of a second.  Zoom in as tight as you can so that there is nothing but black sky and the moon in your shot, then take the shot.

Tomorrow’s tip will be how to add the two shots together in Photoshop.