Moon Shot, January 8, 2014

[Takeda]

 

[D-B-J]

That's cool and all, but I've never found moon shots particularly intriguing.

Best,
Jake

 

[AlanKlein]

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

 

[KmH]

One of the problems with photographing the Moon is that you have to shoot through all of Earth's atmosphere.
Earth's atmosphere is always moving and has temperature gradients that affect focus sharpness.
So even if you use a rock solid tripod you can still get less than sharp Moon shots.

So a useful skill is judging how stable the atmosphere is (astronomers call it seeing) on any given night you want to shoot the Moon, or anything else that is outside Earth's atmosphere..

The nice part about shooting the Moon is it is so far away and brightly lit by the Sun you can use a wider lens aperture that is in your lens sharpest focus aperture range.
The wide lens aperture alliows using a faster shutter speed.

Increasing the mid-tone contrast of the image will give an effect very similar to sharpening without increasing eh visibility of image noise.

 

[minicoop1985]

I dunno, I actually like it as it is. Gives it a very vintage (NOT the hipster vintage) feel, to me at least.

 

[Takeda]

That's cool and all, but I've never found moon shots particularly intriguing.

Best,
Jake

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

One of the problems with photographing the Moon is that you have to shoot through all of Earth's atmosphere.
Earth's atmosphere is always moving and has temperature gradients that affect focus sharpness.
So even if you use a rock solid tripod you can still get less than sharp Moon shots.

So a useful skill is judging how stable the atmosphere is (astronomers call it seeing) on any given night you want to shoot the Moon, or anything else that is outside Earth's atmosphere..

The nice part about shooting the Moon is it is so far away and brightly lit by the Sun you can use a wider lens aperture that is in your lens sharpest focus aperture range.
The wide lens aperture alliows using a faster shutter speed.

Increasing the mid-tone contrast of the image will give an effect very similar to sharpening without increasing eh visibility of image noise.

I dunno, I actually like it as it is. Gives it a very vintage (NOT the hipster vintage) feel, to me at least.

Thank you for your posts! SS 1/500S, f/7.1, ISO=800. 70 200/VR2 lens, with TC20EIII on D300

 

[Gallon]

IMO it is one of the better moon shots I've seen. Nicely done

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

Tripods are useless for moon shoots since shutter speeds need to be extremely high

 

[Takeda]

IMO it is one of the better moon shots I've seen. Nicely done

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

Tripods are useless for moon shoots since shutter speeds need to be extremely high

Thank you!

 

[ronlane]

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

Tripods are useless for moon shoots since shutter speeds need to be extremely high

I disagree with that. a tripod is almost always more stable than handholding. And since you have the lens typically zoomed in all the way and small movement is amplified, a tripod is a better choice.

 

[weepete]

To the op, it's pretty nice and similar to one me and my dad shot last night. He had been wanting a good shot of of the moon for ages but he's a busy chap so hadn't had a chance to try with his new gear yet.

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

Tripods are useless for moon shoots since shutter speeds need to be extremely high

I disagree. Personally I find it easier to use a tripod so I can use the live view and zoom in to 10x to get the focus correct which I can't really do when hand holding. Also it lets me shoot at a lower ISO with a longer SS at a greater focal length. Last night we seemed to get an acceptable exposure at 1/100 sec F8 ISO 100 at 300mm, I couldn't hand hold at that speed and focal length.

Sure, you don't absolutely need a tripod, but given the choice I'd rather use the tripod and keep my ISO low. You might not be bothered and that's fine too, but it's not useless in this scenario.

 

[Takeda]

To the op, it's pretty nice and similar to one me and my dad shot last night. He had been wanting a good shot of of the moon for ages but he's a busy chap so hadn't had a chance to try with his new gear yet.

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

Tripods are useless for moon shoots since shutter speeds need to be extremely high

I disagree. Personally I find it easier to use a tripod so I can use the live view and zoom in to 10x to get the focus correct which I can't really do when hand holding. Also it lets me shoot at a lower ISO with a longer SS at a greater focal length. Last night we seemed to get an acceptable exposure at 1/100 sec F8 ISO 100 at 300mm, I couldn't hand hold at that speed and focal length.

Sure, you don't absolutely need a tripod, but given the choice I'd rather use the tripod and keep my ISO low. You might not be bothered and that's fine too, but it's not useless in this scenario.

Thanks! To answer AlanKlein's question, I took the shot handheld.

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Nice shot but the craters looks a little blurry. Did you use a tripod? What was the shutter speed?

Tripods are useless for moon shoots since shutter speeds need to be extremely high

I disagree with that. a tripod is almost always more stable than handholding. And since you have the lens typically zoomed in all the way and small movement is amplified, a tripod is a better choice.

Using a tripod to shoot the moon is similar to using a tripod to shoot still subjects on a sunny day zoomed in, you will be using similar shutter speeds, but I guess it can help if you're taking your time and need things perfectly stable. I guess my tripod was too flimsy to station my D600 with the 70-300 zoomed out so I preferred hand holding and using VR.