[Steve.Ledger]

How does one stop the damn LCD for compensating in the dark! ?
I can't focus on the moon manually because the damn LCD in live view thinks I want the overall image BRIGHT as day!!!!

Yes I lock AE, makes no difference.
Yes I'm using all manual settings.
As soon as I change Exposure compensation to darken the image, the LCD ramps up the brightness again!!
This is seriously stupid!
I want the live view LCD to show me the image I am getting from my settings! This worked fine on my K-7 (I no longer have it)
Pentax, you silly fools!!! The definition of LIVE VIEW is that it is LIVE!! It should represent what I have set!! Not brighten the hole LCD.. aaarrrghhh!!!

Please tell me I have missed something?

[mtux]

Funny! because I hate it when it's dark and my K-30's LCD brightness is just dark and based on exposure, so I can see nothing! :/

But I think they should work like each others! so maybe we missed a setting!?!?

[Adam]

How does one stop the damn LCD for compensating in the dark! ?
I can't focus on the moon manually because the damn LCD in live view thinks I want the overall image BRIGHT as day!!!!

Yes I lock AE, makes no difference.
Yes I'm using all manual settings.
As soon as I change Exposure compensation to darken the image, the LCD ramps up the brightness again!!
This is seriously stupid!
I want the live view LCD to show me the image I am getting from my settings! This worked fine on my K-7 (I no longer have it)
Pentax, you silly fools!!! The definition of LIVE VIEW is that it is LIVE!! It should represent what I have set!! Not brighten the hole LCD.. aaarrrghhh!!!

Please tell me I have missed something?

Use manual exposure. LV on the K-50 doesn't reflect the actual exposure, so it should really only be used for verifying the focus when shooting moon shots.

[Angrygazel]

How does one stop the damn LCD for compensating in the dark! ?
I can't focus on the moon manually because the damn LCD in live view thinks I want the overall image BRIGHT as day!!!!

Yes I lock AE, makes no difference.
Yes I'm using all manual settings.
As soon as I change Exposure compensation to darken the image, the LCD ramps up the brightness again!!
This is seriously stupid!
I want the live view LCD to show me the image I am getting from my settings! This worked fine on my K-7 (I no longer have it)
Pentax, you silly fools!!! The definition of LIVE VIEW is that it is LIVE!! It should represent what I have set!! Not brighten the hole LCD.. aaarrrghhh!!!

Please tell me I have missed something?

Try to change you AE metering to center-weighted or spot metering it might fix it , I can't try it on the moon because of the damn cloud but work on a light

[richandfleur]

None of the above seems to have any impact on the display the live view mode shows.


I know Steve, as I've just used my K-30 here in NZ for the same thing (well in the 5 second breaks in the cloud I got every once in a while).


Suggestion which may work, is to switch to video mode and do the same digital zoom + focus peaking trick in there. In some cases this didn't gain up quite so much, but it may have just been the clouds blocking the view anyway!


Another tip would be to use the chromatic aberration/purple fringing on the end of the moon. Minimise this and you'll probably be close. This is probably lens dependent, with a worse quality lens making this more pronounced! This way doesn't need any detail on the moon surface itself is all, which may assist when it gains up to buggerdy.

[Oldbayrunner]

Guess you better say silly fools to Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Panasonic, Olympus etc.. Lol.

Lcd's have only been an approximation of how the exposure appears since their inception, some worse than others.. They have gotten better over time and if one wants to get close to what the exposure one might look like on their computer monitor then one needs to change the brightness etc. settings, and don't forget just like a monitor you would also need to be able to calibrate your LCD for color accuracy which at present isn't possible. Given that, the only way to accurately measure your live view exposure or any camera exposure is to use the histogram and/or EV meter scale no matter what AE metering you use then lock the exposure if you want to change the composition.

[sungibr]

Moon pictures are quite tricky, as it has to be meter like you are shooting something in daylight.

Try Spot Metering. The gain on LCD brightness takes what the metering is seeing and set brightness just to "help" you see things, but don't reflect the exposure of the shot. So, it understand that the black sky around a moon is an ultra underexposed image, so it adjust as such, just for you to "see" better.

[normhead]

I've always exposed moon shots manually. Reflected sunlight at ISO 100 is ƒ16 at 1/100 of a second or something like that, then I just experiment from there. It usually ends up being a +3 -3 adjustment.

If you wish to photograph the moon itself, the exposure is much different. The moon is an object reflected in sunlight, so the rule-of-thumb is to use the “Sunny-16 Rule”. This says, for an object in direct sunlight expose at f/16 and time is 1/ISO. So for 100 speed film, your exposure would be 1/125.

[southlander]

I've always exposed moon shots manually. Reflected sunlight at ISO 100 is ƒ16 at 1/100 of a second or something like that, then I just experiment from there. It usually ends up being a +3 -3 adjustment.

Problem though is that the gain applied to the live view image makes the moon a burnt out white spot which makes manual focussing extremely difficult if you are using a lens that will focus past infinity. I had same problem on my K-3 when I tried using my M*300/4 on one of the recent super moons. I suspect spot metering might help tame the gain the processor is trying to add to get to presumably an 18% grey average exposure when it is using matrix metering. Will try spot metering in next night or two to see what happens.

PS: great view of the lunar eclipse a couple of hours ago in Adelaide, South Australia.

[othar]

How does one stop the damn LCD for compensating in the dark! ? I can't focus on the moon manually because the damn LCD in live view thinks I want the overall image BRIGHT as day!!!! Yes I lock AE, makes no difference. Yes I'm using all manual settings. As soon as I change Exposure compensation to darken the image, the LCD ramps up the brightness again!! This is seriously stupid! I want the live view LCD to show me the image I am getting from my settings! This worked fine on my K-7 (I no longer have it) Pentax, you silly fools!!! The definition of LIVE VIEW is that it is LIVE!! It should represent what I have set!! Not brighten the hole LCD.. aaarrrghhh!!! Please tell me I have missed something?

Same behavior with the K3. Live View only shows changes that are at a max of +(-)2 EV away from the calculated metering, if you are further away with your settings no changes are shown.

Try to change you AE metering to center-weighted or spot metering it might fix it , I can't try it on the moon because of the damn cloud but work on a light

Spot metering sounds like a good idea. From what I have heared AF also works on the moon (I have to admit I never tried myself).
I will try spot metering tonight (moon rises in about 3 1/2 h), can tell you more then.

patrick

[monochrome]

You're going to hate this response. Norm above is right on target.

Meter using spot metering. Try to expose on a gray part of the moon (good luck). Use AE-L, then focus with the VF.

The best way I've found to focus that kind of shot is using the OVF and a Refconverter (Right Angle Viewfinder). Yeah - really old-school tool, but works better in that situation than even a hinged LCD. (Finding a Pentax M or A Refconverter is a chore, though. There's an Olympus one that is quite common for around $25 NIB/NOS except when Pentax people bid them up).

[csa]

When I have taken photos of the moon, I focus/expose on the edge of the moon, including some of the black background.

[gaweidert]

In the ancient days we used the sunny 16 rule for lunar exposures. The Moon receives essentially that same amount of light that Earth does. It is a pretty close approximation of the old 18% grey card too. Add to that the light coming from the Moon to us passes trough the atmosphere and you get the sunny 16 rule. Works pretty good too. Haven't tried that with my K5/K5-IIs but I don't see why it would not work.

As mentioned above, manual exposures for the win. The great thing about digital photography is the ability to almost instantly check you photos.

[yygomez]

I think people on this thread is confusing exposure with LV gain. If you read the first post the problem is the LV gain for manual focussing.
Working in manual mode or bulb I have the same problem with my K5IIs, I would love to be able to control the gain applied to the live view image for night shots, that will make LV focusing way easier.

[TedW]

I tried Live View for about 15 seconds when I realized that it would only focus and expose on a portion of the dark sky and not the moon.

What worked really well for me was to use the single point metering, turn off the display screen and shoot through the viewfinder. I also used a 2 second delay on the shutter which turns off the image stabilization

I was surprised that the camera seemed to have enough light to focus. I also found that a 3 second exposure of the moon is too long and what I first thought was lack of focus was really the slight movement of the moon. Using the above settings I took the following photo using my K50 with the sigma 70-300 at f7.1 for, I believe 1.5 seconds with iso around 1200. I cleaned up some of the noise in Topaz Denoize which works really great for me.

I liked this image because of the stars which give a more realistic view of what I was seeing.

After 6 months I've come to realize that I have to search for ways in which the camera works best for different situations. No display and using through the lens view seems to work best for me. I was pleased to see that even thought I turned off the back display that I was able to still view the photos and their histograms using the play button. Just the way it should work in my opinion.