You are standing in the dark on a dyke, camera on a tripod, and you do not really know where to point it. Whether the moon will come up left of the trees or right. Whether the Milky Way will sit over the water or right behind you. By the time you work it out, the best moment has already passed. Night photography is half patience and half knowing in advance what is going to happen. So photographing the moon and the Milky Way does not start with your camera, but with a plan you make the evening before, from your couch.
Start with the position, not your camera
Most failed night shots do not go wrong because of the settings, but because the subject sits in the wrong place in the sky. Before you pack your bag you want to know where the moon rises, how high it climbs and which way it drifts. In the sun and moon planner you drop a pin on your location and see those directions as lines on the map: yellow for the sun, blue for the moon, purple for the Milky Way. Slide through the evening and the lines turn with it, so you see at once whether that church tower comes into frame or whether a row of houses blocks your view. Drag the white dot onto your subject and the tool shows whether you get front, side or back light, and how long the shadows fall under a low moon. The times are in the local time of your spot, so a trip to the Ardennes or Provence works without converting anything.
The moon phase decides what you can do
A full moon and a new moon call for completely different photos. At full moon the sky is too bright for stars, but your landscape bathes in soft moonlight. Good for silhouettes, a snowy field or a city at night. At new moon it is pitch dark, which is exactly what you need for stars and the Milky Way. A thin waxing crescent low over the horizon, just after sunset, is a subject in itself. The planner shows the illumination percentage and the phase per date, plus the moon's rise and set times. That last part matters more than it seems: a moon that only sets at three in the morning ruins your dark hours, even if it is just a half moon. So you pick your evening for what you want to make instead of leaving it to chance. If you want to catch the last daylight, the golden hour shows exactly when blue hour turns into real darkness.
The full moon behind a landmark
The classic shot is a fat moon rising right behind a tower, mill or bridge. That is not luck, it is arithmetic. Just after sunset the moon sits low and warm, because you are looking through a thick layer of atmosphere that reddens the light, just like the sun. If your position is right, it lands precisely behind your subject. In the planner you enter a direction and the alignment finder works a year ahead to show which evenings deliver it, with a filter for full moon only if you want. Then you slide to the minute it rises, so you know how much time you have before it climbs too high and turns white. Keep in mind that you have to stand far away with a long lens, otherwise the moon stays a small dot next to a big building. A few hundred metres of distance and a 200mm or longer lens do wonders for the proportion.
The last Milky Way of the season
From the Netherlands the bright core of the Milky Way sits low in the southern sky, around nine degrees at most. From late autumn it dips below the horizon earlier each evening, so October is your last serious chance until spring. You need four things: a new moon, a clear night, a dark spot with a free view to the south, and patience until the sun has dropped far enough. That last stage is called astronomical twilight, and the planner shows when it arrives and whether the core is still above the horizon by then. A moon that has just risen counts as interfering light too. A dark spot with no lamps nearby is quicker to find through the photo locations, where each spot notes how open the view is.
Settings for the dark
The recipe is simple, the execution less so. Open your lens as wide as it goes, f/2.8 or wider, and pick a shutter speed that just avoids star trails. A rough rule of thumb: divide 500 by your focal length, so at 20mm you land around 25 seconds. Push the ISO up until the sky is well exposed, usually somewhere between 1600 and 6400. How those three balance each other is worth practising beforehand in the exposure triangle, so you are not puzzling in the dark. Focus manually on infinity; with the depth of field calculator you work out from what distance everything is sharp, handy when you want a foreground in the frame. Shoot in RAW, because you pull far more out of the shadows later. And because artificial light and moonlight tint your colours, it helps to set your white balance on purpose rather than trusting auto.
Save your spot for next time
An evening that works is one you want to repeat. Note where you stood, which focal length you used and when the light turned, so you do not have to search again next season. That is what the location log is for. And once you have saved a spot in the planner, you can have it email you as soon as the weather and the position in the sky line up well, about a day ahead. You choose what for: a clear Milky Way night, a full moon rising at sunset, a colourful sky or ground fog at sunrise. That saves you the nights you stood out in the cold for nothing, and you are far less likely to miss the evenings when everything happens to come together.
Night photography stays a game of waiting and hoping for a gap in the clouds. But half the work, knowing where and when, is already done before you leave the house. Open the sun and moon planner, pick your spot and your date, and you will know the evening before exactly where to stand.