Camera Labs

Sorry to the romantics among you - but for us deep-sky imagers, the Moon, especially as it approaches full - is a pain. Really wanted to image tonight, so there's only one thing to do



Canon 40D with a 100-400 mm zoom lens and x1.4 teleconverter.

Greg

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Nexstar 11 GPS, 2 x Sky 90, M25C, MaximDL, Photshop CS3, Noel Carboni's Photoshop actions, 7 foot Pulsar fibreglass dome, Canon 40D, 100mm macro lens, 28-200mm zoom lens, 17-55mm f#2.8 zoom lens, 100-400mm zoom lens, 1.4x converter, 2x converter.
http://www.newforestobservatory.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/

Nice one. It should be rescaled though imo.

Anways better than those i took with my kit lens today (First time in weeks the moon was here in the night ). I had to go 100% to really see it

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Sonyian?

My Flickr - Comments very welcome
Gear: a200, Sony 18-70 3.5-5.6 DT, Minolta 50 1.7 AF, Lowepro TLZ Mini, GorillaPod SLR Zoom
Saving for Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX HSM Macro II (50%)

Rescaled? Smaller??



Greg

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Nexstar 11 GPS, 2 x Sky 90, M25C, MaximDL, Photshop CS3, Noel Carboni's Photoshop actions, 7 foot Pulsar fibreglass dome, Canon 40D, 100mm macro lens, 28-200mm zoom lens, 17-55mm f#2.8 zoom lens, 100-400mm zoom lens, 1.4x converter, 2x converter.
http://www.newforestobservatory.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/

Man i love the moon - i want to go there, for some reason

GREAT image! Really Nice one - i could honestly invest in like a 500mm and get a tele converter just to take pictures of the moon

Thanks mate!

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Seeing that made me want to have another go How hard can it be to get some decent detail out?


Sony A350 ISO400 1/160s 1325mm f/13 resize 25% and unsharp.

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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.

Clearly it can be quite hard
Greg

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Nexstar 11 GPS, 2 x Sky 90, M25C, MaximDL, Photshop CS3, Noel Carboni's Photoshop actions, 7 foot Pulsar fibreglass dome, Canon 40D, 100mm macro lens, 28-200mm zoom lens, 17-55mm f#2.8 zoom lens, 100-400mm zoom lens, 1.4x converter, 2x converter.
http://www.newforestobservatory.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/

Like that yeah, much better imo

When i tried to shoot the moon a few days ago (First day for a lot of time with the moon visible) filled 1/6 of my LCD screen on my cam when zoomed to 100%. And it was unsharp. But i did see some detail on it though

Nice shot Popo. What kinda telescope were you using?

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Sonyian?

My Flickr - Comments very welcome
Gear: a200, Sony 18-70 3.5-5.6 DT, Minolta 50 1.7 AF, Lowepro TLZ Mini, GorillaPod SLR Zoom
Saving for Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX HSM Macro II (50%)

When I was using a 300mm lens, I found the moon rather small too.

I got the Celestron Nexstar 4SE. In photo terms 1325mm f/13 MF I never knew air moved so much until I got it... it's going to take a bit of luck to get a really sharp shot out of it I think.

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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.

Well I too find that shoot down the moon on a photo is really interesting! Maybe it’s because moon photos gives a felling of looking into another world. I recently took this shot using my telelens (700mm):

The shot is not super sharp (using crappy tripod – forced me to put OS on), but as desktop wallpaper it looks really great.

Hmm... maybe this should become the moon thread? :p

Just had a quick go again. Is it me or is the moon bigger? Seems to be less shimmering, even though there's a faint haze in the sky tonight. This is sharper than I got before although I still hope to get even better still.



Same settings as before except for exposure 1/125s and a bit more level processing.

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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.

Perhaps the trick is to use a faster exposure to reduce the effect of the shimmering air?

I'll have to go try this now!

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PhilipGoh.com

Did you invert it, or was it taken like this? Great shot!

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Sonyian?

My Flickr - Comments very welcome
Gear: a200, Sony 18-70 3.5-5.6 DT, Minolta 50 1.7 AF, Lowepro TLZ Mini, GorillaPod SLR Zoom
Saving for Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX HSM Macro II (50%)

To an extent, but still best when not moving at all As bright as the moon is, you still have limits due to available light.

@0eyvind to me Old-shaker-hand's pic doesn't look inverted in any sense (dark bits are dark, orientation normal), but the contrast is set quite high.

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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.

Thanks a lot, but no I did not invert it; I removed the colours and expanded the dynamic range. The problem about moon pictures is that the pixel representing the moon has got a low variance of brightness levels. So in a picture histogram the pixel package representing the moon occupies only a smaller part of the brightness levels. By consequence the moon looks pail/washed out. So I simply use a curve tool so that the moon fills out all the greyscale levels from black to white. So basically I have just expanded the number of used brightness levels making the details more viewable – I think it looks much better! I took myself the freedom to quickly modify popos last moon shot. Please forgive me if Im violating your copyrights popo, I just try to illustrate the difference:

Note that even outside the moon the pixel representation got better. I could have used all 3 colour channels – but I was a bit lazy so I just removed the colours The dynamic range expansion has got a price that you can see if you look closely into some of the darker areas: the surfaces look grainier due to the higher jumps between the brightness of the pixels (could be mistaken with noise). I made the dynamic range expansion in JPEG, so I only had 8 bits (256 levels). If I could have done the dynamic range expansion in RAW then I would have had 12 bits (4096 levels) to work with (less gains). Maybe it is possible to find a tool that can do this - in that case I would like to know about it.


I wouldn’t mind The moon is a great object and it is even possible to see it in the middle of the day:
http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/5830/chimneymoonbm6.jpg
Sorry but the picture is too big to be posted directly in here. Looking forward to see others moon shots

Not really, the contrast is the height and width of the whole picture histogram; I only increase the range of pixels representing the moon.