Pappy loves his moonshine...

jwbryson1 · Apr 9, 2012

My first shot of the moon using my tripod. My 18-200mm lens doesn't have the reach to get a lot of details, but the colors are dead on. Taken at Ocean City, Maryland, April 6, 2012. C&C welcome.

1. Just the moon. 170mm, f/5.6, 1/125, ISO 125.

[/URL] Moon Close Up 2 by jwbryson1, on Flickr[/IMG]

2. The moon rising over the Atlantic Ocean, Ocean City, Maryland, April 5, 2012.

I was trying to capture the beauty of the full moon rising over the Atlantic Ocean and the images looked terrific on my LCD screen. It was only when I imported them into LR3 that I realized the high dynamic range of the image and that perhaps they weren't as good as I had originally anticipated. I opted for a bit more detail on the sky and the ocean and the moon got blown a bit. I still like the end result for the most part.

I tried to shoot up around f/11, but the shutter speed was 25 seconds and the moon got blurry, so I had to open it up a bit. C&C welcome. Thanks for looking.

[/URL] Blue Moon 2 by jwbryson1, on Flickr[/IMG]

jwbryson1 · Apr 9, 2012

Any thoughts on how to improve these images? The second one in particular? Thanks.

Scuba · Apr 9, 2012

#1 why did you only shoot at 170mm if you had the reach to 200mm? The moon looks a little blurry here as well. I know a tripod was used but did you use a release or mirror lock up or even just a timer? I think these things would help.

#2 Not sure how to help with this one... Not sure what you were trying to capture here. To get better moon exposure you would need to loose the detail int the water/sky. There just aren't many colors here. Maybe try a B&W conversion here.

jwbryson1 · Apr 9, 2012

Scuba said:
#1 why did you only shoot at 170mm if you had the reach to 200mm? The moon looks a little blurry here as well. I know a tripod was used but did you use a release or mirror lock up or even just a timer? I think these things would help.

I thought I had read in this forum that shooting at full zoom with that lens caused certain quality issues, so I shoot just short of full zoom. The blur is probably because I cropped in LR3 to get closer to the moon for detail. I opened the shutter by pushing the button softly, but I did not think of using the self-timer and I'm not familiar with using the mirror lock up. I have it but I've never used it before.

Scuba said:
Not sure what you were trying to capture here.

The moon was huge and orange and it was a fairly clear night. I was trying to catch the moon as it first came over the horizon and the reflection off the water. I shot in incandescent WB to make it blue.