I decided that I was jumping the gun somewhat trying to do panoramic views by moonlight before getting the basics of moonlight photography sorted. So the other evening, with a bright, nearly full moon, I tried a few tests:
This view was taken with the lens set to 15mm. The original exposure was very dark – the camera was set to 800ISI with 15 seconds @f5.6. Part of the rational for this series of tests was to determine if another lens would help (I have in mind a 24mm f2.8 ‘pancake’ lens which lets in more light but has a narrower field of view).
So I set the lens to 24mm and increased the exposure to 30 secs. This was brighter but still needed brightening with the image editor:
Now I have a problem: does it look like a poor daytime exposure? A couple of clues are the faint stars in the sky, the orange glow of light pollution in part of the sky, and the 5 garden LED lights glowing a little (the batteries were running down by the time I went out). But the 24mm focal length (=39mm on a full format camera) was fine.
As I had a £100 gift voucher (a thank-you from members of the group I ran workshops for) I decided to put it towards the cost of the pancake lens.
I tried a different shot showing light from the windows of the house to see what that was like:
This is still by moonlight but is more obvious with the light from the windows illuminating the lawn. No artistic merit but food for thought for future experiments…