The moon, from my gear

[dingaroo]

Hope this is the right category.

Been wanting to shoot the moon since I was in primary school when first introduced to astronomy. But since I have no access to a high powered telescope, a telezoom lens will just have to make do.

Please tell me what you think of it. Wished it could be sharper, but I guess maybe time to ask CSC to take a look at the focus on all my lenses and body. First few shoots realised that it was overexposed, not allowing me to see the details of the sea on the moon. The reflection of the sun was too strong. So decided to slow down the shutter speed to 1/1000 while keeping the aperture wide open. Finally got a few shots at different shutter speeds - from 1/500 to 1/1250. But found that this is a nice one.

Thanks in advance kind folks.

PS: No throwing of rotten eggs or cabbage please ... a BigMac I wouldn't mind at this moment, 20mins past 2am! Stomach is growling!

 

[MintChoco]

I might give you a big mac, but I'm hungry too!

Anyway for shots of the moon, you can go with a smaller aperture, maybe f/8 ~ f/11, and your shutter speed can go slower to maybe around 1/100 or so.

 

[dingaroo]

MintChoco,

Thanks for the tip! You late sleeper too?

 

[nerfwings]

Looks out of focus for a shot taken at 300mm.

Try using manual focus together with the live-view magnification function.

 

[MintChoco]

MintChoco,

Thanks for the tip! You late sleeper too?

Sorta,I couldn't sleep even though I was tired. Insomnia rules! heh.

Moon will be really pretty over the next couple of days, so you can try to take more.

 

[knpan]

This is obviously your fault that the photo is blur/Oof etc. No lens will be that bad no matter how cheap they are.

Use a tripod, Make the aperture hole smaller (Big F number) Shutter speed dont need to go that fast as 1/1000th. I prefer to use MF for moon shots. Make sure no wind etc if not there will be shakes. Hope i help

 

[roygoh]

This is obviously your fault that the photo is blur/Oof etc. No lens will be that bad no matter how cheap they are.

Use a tripod, Make the aperture hole smaller (Big F number) Shutter speed dont need to go that fast as 1/1000th. I prefer to use MF for moon shots. Make sure no wind etc if not there will be shakes. Hope i help

We have to take into consideration that the lens used is "only" 300mm, which is way too short for photographing the moon. As such the image shown here must have been heavily cropped, and it is stretching the limits of both the lens and the camera.

Since the moon is so far away the conventional wisdom of "stopping down the aperture to increase DOF and in turn help improve the sharpness" may not really apply.

To dingaroo,

It would be better to use spot metering on the moon rather than center weigthed or matrix. Alternatively, experiment various levels of -EV compensation until the exposure seems right. Also, camera AF may not be reliable on the moon because of the low contrast on the moon surface, plus the ultra high transition of brighness from the moon surface to the black space around it. The best thing is to use manual focusing with the help of a view finder magnifier. However, it is common nowadays for DSLR viewfinder screens to be slightly misaligned, such that when something appears sharp in the virwfinder it is not sharp no the image sensor. Only way is to try manual focusing on normal subjects first to get a feel of the alignment accuracy of your camera.

Finally, if you are really serious about high magnification astrophotography you should really consider a telescope.

 

[geekbrains]

I second Roy on this..This is stretching the resolution beyond its reach..A 300mm is not going to be enough to resolve the finer details of this distant object. Further you're pushing the optical limits of a normal tele zoom at the longest tele end which will obviously be softer especially with the max aperture that it can go with..

 

[knpan]

i understand that it is 300mm onlly, but the photo can still be very sharp at 300mm, even with ALOT of crop. Research on long lens technique.
No, the stopping down of aperture will definitely help in getting sharper picture, sot that u are able to crop more with finer details no matter how far away the subject,

What TS can do is, use a tripod, set to after F16 - F29 should be more than sufficent, ISO 200 max(as u need to crop alot) , there comes the shutter speed part, i know the shutter speed will be slow but its ok at 300mm as the moon do not move as much, 1/50th should be sufficent. I normally use at LEAST 1/80, or if can go faster the better, as the moon in my VF moves really super fast.

 

[Shen siung]

Just wonder will live view (to manual focus) help in this? Usually live view can magnify 10X right?

 

[B-setting]

nice shot nevertheless, ding! keep it up. i must try it sometime, too.

 

[Numnumball]

Never shot moon before but i mus admit this is a :thumbsup: attempt

 

[sabee]

Good attempt! It looks a little OOF, perhaps a smaller aperture (f8-f11 at least) along with manual focus in 10x live view might help!

 

[knpan]

If there is Live view, USE IT, it will definitely be much better than the VF Magnifier, since u can zoom liveview at 5 presses. I press in about 4times and thats more than enough.