Originally posted by Wendell_F Hey Chris,
I like your shot from tonight better than mine that's on flicker from tonight -
Flickr: Photos from Wendell.F . Mine is more blown out, but I just couldn't get it set right. I tried closing down the apperature and it caused vignetting. I should have stopped it down more. Anyway, great shot. I like taking shots from around 3/4 moon and less better. Less light to deal with.
Or, maybe better said as, "Less is more!"
Did you use an adapter for the telescope? I'm thinking aperature was your friend here to keep it from being all white. But then, telescope shots are usually pretty bright. How did you get the exposure you wanted?
Yes, I used a T-mount-to-Pentax-K-adapter and screwed my camera directly to the telescope in place of the telescope's eyepiece. No lens at all, except for the telescope. I then set the 2 "manual lens" settings in the custom menu. From Manual mode, I pressed my AE-L button, and it metered and then I took the picture, 2sec timer, cable release. I used the Center-weighted metering mode. The aperture is fixed on the telescope, and was labeled as f/12.7. The metering gave me a 1/45th second exposure time. I then looked at my histogram and saw I had the room to try the 1/10th second exposure time.
I looked at your flickr. I think your (full moon) shot has plenty enough detail to lower the brighness and then boost the contrast a bit, and it shouldn't look much different from mine. To me, blown out is when the pixels are (almost all) valued at 255. Just too bright is fixable in post process, but blown out is gone forever. Your histogram doesn't look much different from mine, but it is just shifted a little further to the right. Reducing your brightness should slide it left just like you want.
I'm going to try your technique, (shooting afocally, at what's coming out of my eyepiece) but I'll have to wait until tomorrow night. The clouds have rolled in tonight. I'll be trying this with a different telescope, though. My friend brought over his nice telescope last night, but sadly, he took it home.
Good news is that I just got a Tasco Luminova as a gift, so I'll try it with that. It should be interesting to see the difference between a reflector and a refractor.
Originally posted by m8o Yep, Harvest moon was great this year in our area. Twilight, after the sun set that Moon was off the horizon offered a fabulously clean rich dark blue sky and that moon over the LI Sound to me. It reminded me how bummed I am that my camera's broke and couldn't get the shot. (I gotta stop procrastinating!)
Nice capture!
p.s. I had to go back and look again as I didn't even see the watermark the 1st time -- granted, my monitor @ work sux! But I like your sig and don't mind it myself.
Thanks, m8o, for the kind words about the photo, and the .sig. It's definately appreciated.
Originally posted by Mr Hyde You're not too far from Sussex Co. I've been up there a bunch of times. You have some really nice areas to chose from for some really nice shots. I live in Camden Co. Not much "country" left around here anymore. Just a giant suburb.
I'm still in morris county, but it's not far to sussex. I love this area of New Jersey for exactly what you mentioned. I can go 30 minutes east and be in NYC, and 30 minutes west and be in Pennsylvania farmland. North an hour to the mountains, and south an hour to the seashore. Jersey gets a bad rap.
-Chris