How are photos made where the moon looks huge behind a foreground subject?
Asked 2/9/2013
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I’ve seen photos where the moon appears enormous and very close to buildings, people, or landscapes. Is this real, or is there a trick? How do photographers make the moon look so large in the frame compared with the foreground?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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Those are done using the compression of a telephoto lens. Longer lenses will magnify the subject, so will make the moon look bigger. It will also make buildings and other objects bigger, but by moving yourself further away from those earthbound objects you can reduce them back to a smaller size. But you can't really get further away from the moon, so it will remain the same size no matter where you move locally.
So in your example, that might look like it was taken from a short distance away with a 50mm lens, but in fact it may have been taken much further away with a 500mm lens. Result is the foreground looks about the same as if you'd taken it closer with a 50mm lens, but the moon on the other hand is magnified quite a bit.
Originally by user4191. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4191
13y ago
0
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These photos are generally real. The main effect comes from using a very long telephoto lens and choosing the shooting position carefully.
A long lens makes distant subjects appear larger in the frame. If the photographer moves farther away from the foreground subject and uses a longer focal length, the foreground can stay about the same size while the moon appears much larger behind it. This is often described as telephoto “compression.”
The moon itself does not actually become larger because it is near the horizon, though to our eyes it can seem that way due to the moon illusion. In a photo, that illusion usually disappears, so the oversized look mostly comes from lens choice and camera position, not from the moon changing size.
So the recipe is: a long lens, a distant shooting position, and careful alignment with the foreground subject. In some cases, very long lenses such as 500mm or 800mm are used to make the moon prominent in the frame.
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