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For the shot I wanted tonight, I needed at least 20 stops dynamic range and DoF from about 30cm to erm... half a Gm should cover it. Oh, it's a moving target too. So what I have now is the HDR focus stack from hell.

I'm going to warm up now, then attack the images. Will post more later

Stupid thought. Why didn't I use fill flash? Wonder if it's too late to have a go... BRB!

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

A quick sample for now.


Sigma 150mm macro: 2s, f/20, ISO800


Canon 50mm f/1.8: 5s, f/22, ISO3200

Got more to sort through. Basically I saw the more or less full moon out, and as I haven't got my scope out in a while I was going to do that. As I was about to go out I saw a spider web in the doorway, and thought that would be interesting if I can get both in the same shot. Suffice to say it didn't work so well... DoF of about zero to infinity is a bit beyond me. I might still have a go with a pinhole camera, but will leave that for another day.

Fill flash would help with the dynamic range, bit the DoF is still a bit much.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I like what you're trying to do - I think the first one works best...

PS - if you're considering stacking or HDR, then I'd just take two shots and composite them instead, but it may look false...

I do need to play more with photo editing. The biggest problem with the photos is when focused on the web, the moon turns into a big bright OOF blob. I can't put the in focus moon in the same place. The only alternative would be combining a photo of the web and moon separately but I think that's well into photo manipulation territory.

As you might guess, I was messing around with focal lengths and apertures. As the web was in the corner of a door frame, I had to compose accordingly at wider angles like in 2nd pic.

Talk about "breaking rules"... I had a good go at them in the process. I tried tiny apertures for more DoF, never mind diffraction. That bought out the starburst effect which I played with a little. I even dug out a cheap UV filter to try and increase it! The lens flare I was hoping to use as something to balance the pic but it wasn't exactly easy to try getting the ever moving moon in the middle of the web, while putting it off centre and steering flare.

Direct fill flash didn't help much as I guess the light wasn't coming back at the best angle. Since I was using somewhat long exposures (I'll edit exif into other post) maybe I could have manually fire the Sony unit at an angle? Next time perhaps. Or even point a torch at the web.

Well, it was a fun learning experience even if I didn't create any masterpieces in the process this time.

Oh, I even tried a water sprayer on the web to try and bring it out. I think I have the only non-stick spider web as not a drop would stay on it!

_________________
Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

I do not know if this would help, but when NASA guys want to take photographs of faint objects near a bright object (eg: a planet near a star) they put a small disk in front of the bright object, just to cut it out and eleminate its flare. you can try a alu. foil pasted on a old UV filter.

If you have a big enough aperture, you wont even see the small disk in the image. but then you can take the shot in whatever settings you have on the second example. and then stack it with a image of moon in focus.
But rather than blending do an additive stack and create a 32 bit Tiff file.
later you can average the result to 8-bit

But beware, centre obscuration causes loss of contrast.

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Regards,
Varun
Canon 1000D : EFS 18-55 IS
Sigma 70-300 APO DG Macro
Canon 50 1.8 II
Pentax SFX
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