Camera Labs

Hi everyone, we're seeing some great photos of the Moon here in the technical section, so I thought I'd start a stickie thread where people can post their best photos of the Moon, along with a description of what they used to take it. The idea is to encourage newcomers to Lunar photography to give it a shot, so please also explain if there was any special technique you had to use, or any tips you can provide.

Remember, magnification isn't always King here - a nice landscape view with the Moon in it can look great!

If you have any questions about Lunar photography, please start a new thread- this one is to be used as a gallery of examples!

Gordon

Great idea Gordon.


This is about my best attempt so far.



Focal Length: 500.0mm (35mm equivalent: 750...
Exposure Time: 0.011 s (1/90)
Aperture: f/16.0
ISO Equiv.: 400
Whitebalance: Auto
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure: Manual
Exposure Mode: Auto bracketing

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Pentax K-5
Pentax 18-55mm,Pentax 50-200mm,Sigma 17-70mm,Sigma 70-300mm, Sigma 50-500mm

Best detail:


Click for bigger version, approx 1.8 MB, 2888×3863. Canon 50D with Celestron Nexstar 4 SE scope and 2x barlow. 1/60s, 2650mm, f/26, ISO1250. From memory this is a stitch of 5 or 6 images.

Best colour:


18 shots aligned and stacked in registax. Export at 16 bit tif, open in PSE. Crop/rotate/flip. Duplicate layer. To one correct white balance, gradually increase saturation, then blur. To other desaturate and sharpen. Set as colour/luminance respectively. Flatten, resize, sharpen, save. Or something like that. I don't have access to exif at moment but should be intact.

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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.

First shot is with a Focal Reducer F6.3. That's the equivalent of shooting at 1320mm




This is without the Focal Reducer F6.3. That's the equivalent of 2300mm



All of them when shot through a 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope mounted on an GEM HEQ5 Pro. Camera was connected through a T-Ring + 2" T-adapter to allow enough enough back travel for the sensor to focus.

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Canon T2i (550D)- Tamron 17-50 F2.8 Non-VC, Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM, Canon EF-S 55-250mm F4.5-F5.6
http://www.astronomyphotography.com

I'm afraid my approach is a bit different. Having only access to a slow 18-105 kitlens, this is the best conventional moon image I could get. Consider it a fake moon HDR, because I shot the stars and the moon, and combined the 2 (which shouldn't be possible).:


Next up is the non-conventional night/water/landscape Gordon's talking about. Hey, it has the moon on it? (straight out of the camera, sorry for the crooked horizon)

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

If you guys want to take a look. I have uploaded a full resolution , not cropped of the original RAW image with a F6.3 Focal reducer. This is a 2 meg jpg file. You can see much more details.

http://www.astronomyphotography.com/images/IMG_0001_2-1.jpg

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Canon T2i (550D)- Tamron 17-50 F2.8 Non-VC, Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM, Canon EF-S 55-250mm F4.5-F5.6
http://www.astronomyphotography.com

The last time I seriously photographed the Moon was during the last total eclipse visible in the Southern Hemisphere on 28 August 2007.

I used a Televue Genesis SDF refracting telescope which has a 540mm focal length and f5.4 aperture - so a 100mm objective. I then fitted a Canon EOS 5D DSLR with a 2x teleconverter, which has proven an effective and sharp combo in the past. So I was working at a real - and effective - focal length of 1080mm at f10.8.

The scope was on a tracking mount, but I hadn't aligned it accurately, so I found the maximum exposures I could get away with were no longer than half a second. Since the reddish effect during totality is very dim, this meant cranking up the ISO further than I'd liked. I shot RAW plus JPEG.

Here's three quick shots showing a partial before totality and the moment a few minutes before and after totality. All are taken directly from the JPEG originals with daylight white balance and none have been adjusted or tweaked.

The first shot was taken at 1/250 at 100 ISO.

The second and third shots were taken at 0.5 secs at 1600 ISO.



You'll notice I foolishly removed my camera during totality to do some observing with the telescope and as such the third image isn't orientated to match the first two - bah! Looks like I'll be doing some rotating later on this one...

Note: these are crops, but to show you the size of the moon on the originals, here's a full-size, uncropped frame.




If you're interested in eclipses, the undisputed expert is NASA's Fred Espinak, who's website http://www.mreclipse.com/MrEclipse.html will tell you everything you need to know about photographing these beautiful events.

Gordon

Make no mistake - a good image of the Moon is tough. This is NOT a good image:



Canon 40D with Canon 100-400 mm zoom at 400 mm with x1.4 teleconverter. f#8 with various exposure times from 0.5 second to 1/100 second combined using an HDR equivalent.

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/

here's my shot with the Canon SX10is at max telephoto(4 x 560mm)



click for full size

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BDS Photo Blog
flickr
Nikon D90 | Nikon F-401s |Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 | Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 | Nikkor 70-300mm | Raynox DCR-250 | Nikon SB-600

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D90/70-300VR/18-105VR/50mmf/1.8 tamron 17- 50mm f2.8 ,FZ50 Sony HDR-HC9


http://community.webshots.com/user/pcg8 ... =community

!

My best moon photo with canon sx 10 is.

Might as well make use of the cloud while it is in the way.

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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.

ISO 100 , 192mm ( don't ask why ) , f/4.0 , 1/320 , 100% crop



Softer post processing , went a bit overboard in first one

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Canon 5DmkII + Some Lenses
Flickr

100% Full Moon
October 4, 2009 Seoul, South Korea

Nikon D300
Nikon 70-300mm VR

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Nikon D800
Nikon 14-24mm f2.8G, Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f2.8G, Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f2.8G VRII, Tokina 100mm f2.8D Macro and Nikon AF 50mm f1.8D.
Nikon SB-700, Nikon SB-600

Full moon
I took the photo directly from a telescope's eyepiece.

Canon VIXIA HG20 (HD Camcorder, but takes stills @ 3.2MP )
1/120 sec.
f/1.8
4.8 mm focal lenght