How to capture Full Moon with your Smartphone

For most of you, the very mention of the term "Astrophotography" conjures up images of pictures of the night skies with crystal clear clarity. Contrary to this fact, the absence of the moon is hardly noticed by most the time one sees these photos. Why? The reason is that the moon is as bright as the sun when contrasted against the starry sky. Even cameras on smartphones lack the dynamic range to natively capture the moon and stars in their entirety.

Nothing here, however, dispels the notion that capturing the moon isn't important to humanity. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Indeed, the majority of photographers find full moons to be aesthetically pleasing subjects. If you're interested in photography but don't yet own a camera or other photography equipment, don't fret. Today's tutorial is how to take a picture of the full moon using only your phone. If everything goes right you can get a result, something like this:

Things You Need:

As with most guides on smartphone photography, having a manual or "Pro" mode in the camera application that you use is useful to be able to adjust settings manually. For those cases when manual mode is not available in your default camera app, third-party apps are quite easily available for download, both for Android and iOS.

Modern smartphones contain several cameras, one of which is usually a "Telephoto" camera. When following the process, use this one. If the smartphone does not have such a lens, one can cover the camera sensor of a smartphone with a clip-on telephoto lens. However, in any case, the digital zoom on a smartphone camera is an accident waiting to happen.

This shot can be done handheld if you wish, but generally speaking, a picture is best taken as steady as possible, especially with zoom; hence, a phone tripod stand is optional. Just lean your phone on something stable in case the handheld doesn't work for you and you don't have a stand. It will also do the trick.

Time

Planning plays a part, and one cannot get the right shot at the instance when it is a Full Moon. First of two things to look out for is the moon cycle. The full moon appears on the fourteenth day of each lunar month, which is about 29 days. There are plenty of tools over the internet and in your smartphone that can update you on which date and time a full moon falls. You, therefore, need to plan in advance.

The next agenda would be the weather forecast. No amount of planning can ensure that you can photograph the full moon in its natural habitat if poor weather conditions do not permit you to do so. You can check the chances of a clear night in the location you want to shoot by using a weather forecast app or website. Whatever the case may be, you should always be prepared for any kind of weather condition.

Image Preferences

As said earlier, your smartphone's camera must be on some manual mode in order for you to go ahead and alter the exact parameters. It has options for Shutter Speed, ISO, and Focus control. The added controls are aperture, RAW Capture, and the shutter timer. Following is what some of the best settings are, and why:.

The built-in capability of most smartphone cameras is excellent when it comes to the capture of regular photographs. However, this is where the auto-focus can completely destroy the shot. For this reason, once you have set your focus on infinity, you need to go to manual focus. Again, this effect is as simple to achieve; bring the focus dial all the way to infinity loop, or a mountain scene does the magic where the moon will stay focused at all times thanks to it.

The setting for ISO on a digital camera defines the sensitivity of the image sensor to light. ISO is a variable and, as it goes up, becomes more sensitive to light. The default setting of most cameras is 100, though some go as low as 50. Since the brightness of the moon against the night sky is very bright, even the lowest setting would be sufficient. So, in order to get a shot devoid of noise, set the ISO at 100.

The term "shutter speed" defines how fast the shutter opens and closes while taking a shot in the case of a camera. It is measured by seconds; according to light conditions and some other factors, the range can be 1/60 to 1/125 seconds for a full moon shot. One can always observe a trade-off: either better exposure with less sharpness when a slower shutter speed is used or the opposite. Be sure to experiment with these settings and find those that yield the most optimal given shot from the range above.

In order to optimize this process even more, a few configuration options can be altered. First off is the Aperture, which you won't find with variable aperture on most phones. You may, however, be in a position to adjust it on some Samsung flagship models. With that said, to get a sharper photo, you will need to go up the aperture. Finally, enable RAW image capture if your phone allows it since that feature would be helpful in post-processing, but not all phones allow this option. A second shutter timer basically helps in keeping the phone steady, so that it may not jerk with your push of the shutter button, which is one of the important things when you go about capturing a photo.

Follow these tips, and capture incredible pictures of the moon using just your smartphone. Patience and practice will yield the best result.