Misc The full Moon

Alberts · 10-13-2011, 04:48 AM

Hi!

I have attached two photographs of the full moon taken on 12-oct-20111. I understand that these pictures are far from high quality photo.
The first picture was taken with shutter speed 1/320 (1/350 is closest value that was allowed), the second one was taken with shutter speed 1/400. Both pictures were taken by hand-held camera using image stabilisation. I used the standard kit’s telephoto lens DA L 50-200 mm. The focal length was 200 mm (300 mm in 35 mm film equivalent). The pictures were taken in RAW format. The only post processing is cropping and some changes in white balance.
I have tried to shoot the moon several times. The challenge for me is to take a quite sharp mage. Up to now I have not solved it properly.
I will highly appreciate any critique, advice, suggestions, etc.

Attached Images

View Picture EXIF

View Picture EXIF

audiobomber · 10-13-2011, 05:10 AM

They look pretty good to me. Try boosting contrast in post-processing to bring out more detail. I don't think you can do any better handheld with a consumer-level 200mm zoom. SR helps, but a tripod with mirror lockup would improve sharpness, and allow you to use a lower ISO. A longer lens would reduce the amount of cropping. A higher quality lens would be sharper.

snappychappy · 10-13-2011, 06:31 AM

That's very nice.

joelovotti · 10-13-2011, 04:01 PM

I think these are about the best you can do with your current lens.

If you want to do better there are cheap 500mm mirror lenses that can get you a good image of the moon. I've attached a moon shot taken with a Tamron 500mm Mirror lens and a 2X doubler that I paid around $200 for total. This was taken on a cheap tripod with shake reduction off.

Hope this helps,
joe

Attached Images

Alberts · 10-13-2011, 11:26 PM

Originally posted by audiobomber

They look pretty good to me. Try boosting contrast in post-processing to bring out more detail. I don't think you can do any better handheld with a consumer-level 200mm zoom. SR helps, but a tripod with mirror lockup would improve sharpness, and allow you to use a lower ISO. A longer lens would reduce the amount of cropping. A higher quality lens would be sharper.

Thanks for comments and suggestions. In that shooting session I took about 20 (+/-) photographs but only these two was more or less sharp. The rest were quite or very (in same cases) soft (blurry). As I used shutter speeds faster than reciprocal of focal length (35 mm equivalent focal length) as well as image stabilisation then the photographs should have theoretically been more or less sharp even without a tripod. So I wonder why so many photographs were soft. I presume that the reason for some could have been random excessive shake from holding the camera in hands. However, the number of the soft images was too high. May be some thin clouds invisible in night-time could have played a role. That night was cloudy. Due to this reason I postponed the shooting for an hour. And I took photographs later when I saw no cloud around the moon. Perhaps, the sky was not clear enough.

Alberts · 10-13-2011, 11:37 PM

Hi joelovotti,

Your photograph is very good and sharp. It is actually excellent. The so-called the moon’s “seas” and craters are visible very well.
As I understand, you used the lens with focal length 500 mm plus teleconverter 2x. So the overall focal length is 1000 mm. It is impressing. If your camera’s sensor is not full frame but has some crop factor, the 35 mm film equivalent focal length is even higher. Could you reveal the camera and the parameters of exposure (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) for this photo?

audiobomber · 10-14-2011, 05:01 AM

Originally posted by Alberts

As I used shutter speeds faster than reciprocal of focal length (35 mm equivalent focal length) as well as image stabilisation then the photographs should have theoretically been more or less sharp even without a tripod.

Adequate shutter speed and SR are good, but you will still get a sharper photo with a tripod and timed shutter release. Also, a tripod would resolve whether the issue is hand shake. Two sharp photos out of 20 is not a very good result. It's possible there is something wrong with the gear. You could do some testing to determine whether you have any back/front focus. OTOH, you had to crop these pretty hard. It could be just that you're at the limit of what you can get from the 50-200mm.

Alberts · 10-14-2011, 05:42 AM

What do you mean “something wrong with the gear”? Do you mean AF mechanism? I took these photos in manual focus and simply set the focus to infinity. So, if there were some problems with AF, they should not affect the photographs.
I do not have a tripod. At the moment I have not ripped for it

.

Dr Orloff · 10-14-2011, 06:13 AM

Rather than a lens you could buy a basic telescope and hook up your camera.

audiobomber · 10-14-2011, 06:18 AM

Originally posted by Alberts

What do you mean “something wrong with the gear”? Do you mean AF mechanism? I took these photos in manual focus and simply set the focus to infinity.

Yes, I meant AF, so just ignore that. Setting the lens to infinity may not be a good plan. Some lenses focus beyond infinity. If you're using MF, you would try looking through the viewfinder to ensure you're actually focussed on the moon. Try a few with AF too.

Alberts · 10-14-2011, 11:35 AM

My standard kit lens DA L 50-200 mm actually lacks the distance marks on the focus ring. So I turned the focus simply to the direction towards infinity until the end. It is not so essay to see the small details for the moon in the optical viewfinder. So I am not sure whether I can catch nuances between infinity and not full infinity. However, next time I will try

. Theoretically I can also use live view that allows enlarging some part of the frame.
I will have variants for experimenting.

joelovotti · 10-14-2011, 04:31 PM

Originally posted by Alberts

Hi joelovotti,

Your photograph is very good and sharp. It is actually excellent. The so-called the moon’s “seas” and craters are visible very well.
As I understand, you used the lens with focal length 500 mm plus teleconverter 2x. So the overall focal length is 1000 mm. It is impressing. If your camera’s sensor is not full frame but has some crop factor, the 35 mm film equivalent focal length is even higher. Could you reveal the camera and the parameters of exposure (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) for this photo?

Your understanding is correct. You can buy the lens and doubler on ebay almost every week. This was shot with my old istDS @ ISO 800. The mirror lenses have a fixed f-stop of f8. With the doubler that's an f16. The shutter speed was 1/250.

This is making me want to set it up again since I now have a K5 and a very nice Manfrotto tripod.

Good Luck,
joe

Alberts · 10-18-2011, 11:59 PM

Hi!

A few days age I tried the advice to use AF for shooting the moon. And I am impressed with results. It seams that AF provides sharper photo than MF when I simply turned the focus ring until the infinity end. I attached three photographs below. I think that all the photos contain EXIF information although these are cropped pictures.
I am very weak in PP. So the only PP is some adjustments of WB and cropping as well as conversion from RAW into JPG. However, I should say that during this very simple PP I get results which wonder me. I was using Pentax Utilities (software that comes in K-x kit). After the adjustments of WB I saved the images as JPG files. Then I cropped smaller images from these JPG files. When I looked at these images I discovered that the cropped ones were sharper (more craters and small details were visible) than the uncropped JPG files. I would like to point out that I looked and compared both cropped and uncropped JPG files at so-called life size (100% zoom in viewer). So the zooming in the viewer should not cause this difference. It interesting that I did not manage to get the same result when I did copping in RAW and then saved images as JPG files. This outcome of my PP activities is
I have attached only cropped JPG. If there is interest, I can also attach the uncropped JPG files. Unfortunately, I do not have them with me. However I can post then later. The only problem that uncroped JPG have more than 12 MP. So I would have to reduce the pixels. In turn, this would also reduce the image quality and make difficult to compare them.

audiobomber · 10-19-2011, 09:58 AM

Very nice results, definitely an improvement. Did you try a lower shutter speed and lower ISO? ISO 400 and 1/320s may have looked a little better.

Without a tripod, you could try propping the camera up so you could take advantage of ISO 200 or lower and eliminate mirror slap.

Alberts · 10-20-2011, 04:09 AM

Actually these pictures were taken handheld. So I used quite high ISO to achieve faster shutter speed. The ISO for all three photos are 800. K-x performs quite well at high ISO and produces good photos even at ISO 1600. So I use ISO 800 quite frequently when the light conditions are not very good.
The shutter speeds were also quite fast – 1/800, 1/800 and 1/640 respectively. The aperture was not very low – F8, F9 and F10 respectively. However, it was not also very wide.
I presume if I had tried lower ISO, more closed aperture and lower shutter speed, I could have reach better results. Unfortunately, I do not have tripod and the angle of shooting was so steep that I could not support camera on windowsill or similar thing. When I have a appropriate conditions I will tray to shoot the moon at lower ISO and smaller aperture. It seams that the craters and similar details are more visible on the moon when the moon is not full but half (waning or waxing). I think that shutter speed cannot also be too slow because then the earth rotation will start to play the role.
Is a mystery for me how I could get sharper photos after cropping. The cropped ones are sharper than images before cropping. I did make any additional PP for cropped photos.

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10-13-2011, 05:10 AM	#2
audiobomber Veteran Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: Sudbury, Ontario Photos: Albums Posts: 6,806	They look pretty good to me. Try boosting contrast in post-processing to bring out more detail. I don't think you can do any better handheld with a consumer-level 200mm zoom. SR helps, but a tripod with mirror lockup would improve sharpness, and allow you to use a lower ISO. A longer lens would reduce the amount of cropping. A higher quality lens would be sharper.

10-13-2011, 06:31 AM	#3
snappychappy Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Leeds Posts: 1,636	That's very nice.

10-13-2011, 04:01 PM	#4
joelovotti Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: US Photos: Albums Posts: 393	I think these are about the best you can do with your current lens. If you want to do better there are cheap 500mm mirror lenses that can get you a good image of the moon. I've attached a moon shot taken with a Tamron 500mm Mirror lens and a 2X doubler that I paid around $200 for total. This was taken on a cheap tripod with shake reduction off. Hope this helps, joe Attached Images

10-13-2011, 11:26 PM	#5
Alberts Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Riga Photos: Gallery Posts: 77 Original Poster	Originally posted by audiobomber They look pretty good to me. Try boosting contrast in post-processing to bring out more detail. I don't think you can do any better handheld with a consumer-level 200mm zoom. SR helps, but a tripod with mirror lockup would improve sharpness, and allow you to use a lower ISO. A longer lens would reduce the amount of cropping. A higher quality lens would be sharper. Thanks for comments and suggestions. In that shooting session I took about 20 (+/-) photographs but only these two was more or less sharp. The rest were quite or very (in same cases) soft (blurry). As I used shutter speeds faster than reciprocal of focal length (35 mm equivalent focal length) as well as image stabilisation then the photographs should have theoretically been more or less sharp even without a tripod. So I wonder why so many photographs were soft. I presume that the reason for some could have been random excessive shake from holding the camera in hands. However, the number of the soft images was too high. May be some thin clouds invisible in night-time could have played a role. That night was cloudy. Due to this reason I postponed the shooting for an hour. And I took photographs later when I saw no cloud around the moon. Perhaps, the sky was not clear enough.

10-13-2011, 11:37 PM	#6
Alberts Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Riga Photos: Gallery Posts: 77 Original Poster	Hi joelovotti, Your photograph is very good and sharp. It is actually excellent. The so-called the moon’s “seas” and craters are visible very well. As I understand, you used the lens with focal length 500 mm plus teleconverter 2x. So the overall focal length is 1000 mm. It is impressing. If your camera’s sensor is not full frame but has some crop factor, the 35 mm film equivalent focal length is even higher. Could you reveal the camera and the parameters of exposure (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) for this photo?

10-14-2011, 05:01 AM	#7
audiobomber Veteran Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: Sudbury, Ontario Photos: Albums Posts: 6,806	Originally posted by Alberts As I used shutter speeds faster than reciprocal of focal length (35 mm equivalent focal length) as well as image stabilisation then the photographs should have theoretically been more or less sharp even without a tripod. Adequate shutter speed and SR are good, but you will still get a sharper photo with a tripod and timed shutter release. Also, a tripod would resolve whether the issue is hand shake. Two sharp photos out of 20 is not a very good result. It's possible there is something wrong with the gear. You could do some testing to determine whether you have any back/front focus. OTOH, you had to crop these pretty hard. It could be just that you're at the limit of what you can get from the 50-200mm.

10-14-2011, 05:42 AM	#8
Alberts Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Riga Photos: Gallery Posts: 77 Original Poster	What do you mean “something wrong with the gear”? Do you mean AF mechanism? I took these photos in manual focus and simply set the focus to infinity. So, if there were some problems with AF, they should not affect the photographs. I do not have a tripod. At the moment I have not ripped for it .

10-14-2011, 06:13 AM	#9
Dr Orloff Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Brighton, England Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 512	Rather than a lens you could buy a basic telescope and hook up your camera.

10-14-2011, 06:18 AM	#10
audiobomber Veteran Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: Sudbury, Ontario Photos: Albums Posts: 6,806	Originally posted by Alberts What do you mean “something wrong with the gear”? Do you mean AF mechanism? I took these photos in manual focus and simply set the focus to infinity. Yes, I meant AF, so just ignore that. Setting the lens to infinity may not be a good plan. Some lenses focus beyond infinity. If you're using MF, you would try looking through the viewfinder to ensure you're actually focussed on the moon. Try a few with AF too.

10-14-2011, 11:35 AM	#11
Alberts Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Riga Photos: Gallery Posts: 77 Original Poster	My standard kit lens DA L 50-200 mm actually lacks the distance marks on the focus ring. So I turned the focus simply to the direction towards infinity until the end. It is not so essay to see the small details for the moon in the optical viewfinder. So I am not sure whether I can catch nuances between infinity and not full infinity. However, next time I will try . Theoretically I can also use live view that allows enlarging some part of the frame. I will have variants for experimenting.

10-14-2011, 04:31 PM	#12
joelovotti Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: US Photos: Albums Posts: 393	Originally posted by Alberts Hi joelovotti, Your photograph is very good and sharp. It is actually excellent. The so-called the moon’s “seas” and craters are visible very well. As I understand, you used the lens with focal length 500 mm plus teleconverter 2x. So the overall focal length is 1000 mm. It is impressing. If your camera’s sensor is not full frame but has some crop factor, the 35 mm film equivalent focal length is even higher. Could you reveal the camera and the parameters of exposure (aperture, shutter speed, ISO) for this photo? Your understanding is correct. You can buy the lens and doubler on ebay almost every week. This was shot with my old istDS @ ISO 800. The mirror lenses have a fixed f-stop of f8. With the doubler that's an f16. The shutter speed was 1/250. This is making me want to set it up again since I now have a K5 and a very nice Manfrotto tripod. Good Luck, joe

10-19-2011, 09:58 AM	#14
audiobomber Veteran Member Join Date: May 2008 Location: Sudbury, Ontario Photos: Albums Posts: 6,806	Very nice results, definitely an improvement. Did you try a lower shutter speed and lower ISO? ISO 400 and 1/320s may have looked a little better. Without a tripod, you could try propping the camera up so you could take advantage of ISO 200 or lower and eliminate mirror slap.

10-20-2011, 04:09 AM	#15
Alberts Forum Member Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Riga Photos: Gallery Posts: 77 Original Poster	Actually these pictures were taken handheld. So I used quite high ISO to achieve faster shutter speed. The ISO for all three photos are 800. K-x performs quite well at high ISO and produces good photos even at ISO 1600. So I use ISO 800 quite frequently when the light conditions are not very good. The shutter speeds were also quite fast – 1/800, 1/800 and 1/640 respectively. The aperture was not very low – F8, F9 and F10 respectively. However, it was not also very wide. I presume if I had tried lower ISO, more closed aperture and lower shutter speed, I could have reach better results. Unfortunately, I do not have tripod and the angle of shooting was so steep that I could not support camera on windowsill or similar thing. When I have a appropriate conditions I will tray to shoot the moon at lower ISO and smaller aperture. It seams that the craters and similar details are more visible on the moon when the moon is not full but half (waning or waxing). I think that shutter speed cannot also be too slow because then the earth rotation will start to play the role. Is a mystery for me how I could get sharper photos after cropping. The cropped ones are sharper than images before cropping. I did make any additional PP for cropped photos.