Yesterday was 10/10 cloud from 6pm onwards, so no further opportunity there.
Higher hopes for tonight, but I have just run the cloud sequence on the BBC weather site, and once again it does not look good for Norfolk UK. :( :(

Don

Similar situation in Castle Donington, we had drizzle by 6pm although bright sunny conditions all day. I was hoping to emulate Andy's low shutter hand held technique. i live in hope for this evening.

BBC weather cloud predictions are looking good for you tonight Foxy. If you manage it the view should be very similar to Johns pic in post 20. Bazz's suggestion of converting to B&W helped with my soft shot so I will use that technique next time.


Suffering from stiff joints as well then :D :D

Don

Stephen

Just shot this full moon tonight, did a lot of head scratching. I was not that pleased with this one.:-

http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...500&ppuser=146

Cheers

A quick one from this evening. The moon was in partial eclipse - earths shadow. Picture taken at 20:08 this evening.

As usual if you are in a rush to post, image editing progs decide on a ' GO SLOW ' . :(

Bit of a rush job as I saw this by accident so no time to set scope/camera up properly, ie no remote release, as I did not know how long it would last.

I will post some more tomorrow.

Don

Here's a couple of shots I took this evening with Canon 30D + 100-400mm ISO100 f8 1/320 400mm

A bit disappointed with them :(

Nick and Bish,

I think use of curves can improve both of these. I will look tomorrow as I have had to sign in more times than that in the last 20 mins. :confused:

I did look at yours Nick, Bish posted while I was in the gallery. Curves will give an improvement ( improve contrast ). I notice you used f16 but I don't think you need any more than f8 with your lens.

Don

Very good shots, mine were very similar to yours, its a pity the craters do not stand out, I guess that is because there are no shadows???

http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...500&ppuser=146

Pictures of a full moon always lack that bit of detail.

Bish, I have done a very quick curves job on one of yours to give an idea, attached. Nick I will have to relook at yours as my image editor will not open the file. :confused:

Don

Don, that looks a lot better, I think the reason why you cannot open my file is because I converted it to greyscale? I will post another to my gallery without editing. I'll try and find another shoot with a larger F stop.

Cheers

I did have another go Nick. I can open in Paint Shop Pro 8 but no histogram and limited functions. :(

I will keep an eye open for your next pic.

Don

Don, Just uploaded an F8 shot which I got from a 9 shot bracket,

Cheers

The purpose of yesterday was to experiment with handheld and was surprisingly easy. I shot this one quite early after one or two others. After a short break I noticed something flying across the moon so grabbed the camera, pointed and hoped, I am kind of pleased with this one.

Camera and lens (200-400 at 400mm) f4, 1/400 ISO 250 Matrix metering -0.7EV RAW

NX converted to B&W cropped then sharpened in PS.

I confess to living near an airport but I do not recall one taking off and if so would have turned out to South so I am not sure where the aeroplane came as the moon was near due East, aeroplane would have to turned to the North the pass the moon. The aeroplane appears to be a boring 737.

Nick,

I have done a little job on your image. Not sure if you or Bish have used curves before so I have attatched a graphic. There is a thread on this in the Digital Darkroom.

The attatched image was done in NX where I also converted to B&W. The snag with the moon in this phase is as you commented the lack of shadow detail. So B&W was used as a way of increasing contrast to try and bring out detail. Now that the moon is starting to wane, over the period 9th to 14th September ( last quarter ) this is the time to catch more detail.

Note to Admin. If this works problem SOLVED :)

Don

Here is something to put our humble efforts into perspective.

Stevie does a bit of star gazing using her birding scope, and so gets a couple of monthly magazines. In the readers gallery of one of her latest is a full page well detailed image of the moon about 1/2 phase.

Quote " The moon is a difficult subject for astronomers because of the low contast among its surface features. This 42-image mosaic captures the full face in great detail. ( 9.25 inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at f10, ToUcam Pro webcam. For each of the 42 images, the imager selected and stacked the best 20-30 frames out of 500. ) "

My reading of this suggests then that the final composite is made up from the best of 21,000 frames. :eek:

Don

Only just seen this thread, very interesting.
Take a look at a shot i took with my D70 using a 80-400 vr Teleplus 2x converter 1/160 @ F/5.6 ISO200 hand held.
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...3/DSC5140c.jpg

Very impressive Mick. Are you sure you need the monopod in your avatar ? :D

There must be something about Nikon and siezed joints.

I have not circumbed yet and have to rely on a heavy tripod. I'll blame my eyes for the rest. :)

Don

Thanks for the info on curves Don, I haven't used them before but followed your advice with this image in Lightroom which has improved it a bit, also converted to B&W, I will try some more shots as the moon wanes.

Regards Bish. :)

Here is a composite from yesterday for those that missed it.

Don

Don,

Thanks for your efforts and advice, its amazing what you can do with a little curve adjustment, I will have another go tonight and if I need to will mess around with curves. I have tried USM which does seem to help bring out the shadow a bit but the downside for me is I get a thin halo round the moon.

Cheers

Tonights experiment to compare an image through a scope and an old 300mm f4.5 AIS lens.

This lens long discontinued, was never the sharpest pencil in Nikons box. In fact on a D2X sensor it is best described as soft. So I thought it would make a suitable candidate to try. Also it is the longest lens I have. I dont have a TC to put on the 80-200 or that would be a different story.

Compared to using the scope it was a delight to focus. The posted image is a full frame crop so not a huge magnification. Curves and conversion to B&W were used along with a fair amount of usm.

ISO200, 1/160sec @ f8.

Don

Hi Don, I see what you mean about the moon phase, the shadows are now appearing. This is my latest effort.
1/320, f/6.3, ISO100, curves and B&W little sharpening.

We're all at it tonight... tragic isn't it? ;)
I put the the 1.7x teleconverter on the 300mm tonight. And for anyone who is interested by the magnification difference a 1.7x is over a 1.4x on a 300mm lens... it's your lucky night ;)

May as well do it properly, with the bare 300mm as well. This is how large they are in the frame. And no, I won't be getting the 600 out tonight ;)

EDIT... found a 600+1.4x shot for comparison, so now added to the scale line-up. In the past, when-ever I've been upgrading focal length on lenses, I was always keen to see direct comparison to see how much difference it makes, so maybe this will help others decide the worth of more focal length.

I can't compete with that Andy. Superb job. Yours are a challenge for Foxy Bob.

After my earlier meagre offering I have had a rummage in the loft ( nothing better to do ) and found what I thought I had. An 1980's Teleplus 2X converter. Stuck this on the 300 and here is the result.

Don

Nick,

Good effort. My 2 from tonight were f8 and I reckon you could safely reduce shutter speed to get there.

I would suggest a slightly lighter touch on curves ( but that's personal ) and trust me you can add lots of usm. I used a radius of 0.4 and gave it loads. Then if you resize try a radius of 1.0 and give it a touch. ( This is bound to be contraversial among the no sharpness guys ) Keeping the ISO down as much as possible is a good plot and you bettered me there. Mine were ISO200 at 1/160 sec f8.


Don

So have I got to trade in my x1.4 for a x2 tomorrow ? :rolleyes:

Rob,

It was your gallery pic that made me do my trial tonight. I noticed the focal length.

I don't think we can compete with Andy and Foxy on the glass front.
You keep your 1.4 and I won't bin the teleplus. :)

I see you have well and truely joined us crazies here, 2 moon pics !! :D :D

Don

Hi Andy, It would be good to see all images the same size (cropped) to see how the TC effect the image quality, I guess it could be possible to get a better shot the same size without a TC? Or is magnification everything shooting moon shots?

Cheers

Nice set of examples Andy. Size really does make a difference.

All things being equal, adding teleconverters does reveal more detail.. But, and its a big but, the problems of extra focal length and adding more glass creates it's own problems that can diminish the detail.

cheers,
Andy

Here's one from tonight, What a difference a few days make to the amount of detail visible

400mm f8 1/200th ISO-200

Regards Bish. :D

This is tonight's effort, 3rd shot taken. I'm getting the hang of this!:)

Edited it PS, used auto curves, little sharpening and B&W.

Two impressive pics Nick & Bish. I have just done a mod on the old 2x TC so it will go on my 80-200ED f2.8 Nikkor.

If this afternoons tests are reasonable I will have a go with this tonight.

Don

Here is an interesting article from NASA about moonlight and the eye.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2....htm?list68516

Thanks for that link Stephen, very interesting.

You post this Foxy and I spend 2 whole evenings trying for something a bit different. :p

So after many hours the result is in the gallery.

Don

Following my gallery post of Moon, Clouds and a Reflection I thought I would post a bit of an explanation for anyone else considering trying it.

For me the most striking effect on the long exposure background was the ghost reflection. Sassan has probably correctly attributed this to a reflection from the filter. In this case a Nikon L1A. Until the total cloud cover we now have goes, I cannot check this out. I have attached a composite of 2 images taken immediately one after the other but with a slight change of moon, re-positioning in the frame. It was fairly windy and the degree of cloud move is quite obvious when comparing the 2 shots.

Also attached is a composite showing the two images used in making the final. The most obvious thing to note is the exposure difference - 8 stops. The moon itself on the background exposure is totally burnt out and part of the shadow area is recorded. A problem with the long exposure required to get some detail in visible clouds is that high ice cloud, if present, will also be recorded. Fine for a nice effect but unless you are a digital darkroom wizard it does present problems when combining two images. The problem to be overcome is shown well in the ' Moon Move Overlay ' image.

The overlay of the 2 images shows the degree of movement by the moon during the 1 sec exposure. The overlay was lined up with the rear visible detail. To arrive at the final image the perfectly exposed moon was brightened to not look stuck on, and size increased to 105%. Although at this size in the final shot there appears to be a bright ring around the edge of the moon, when viewed at 300% there is detail almost to the edge allbeit faily bright. Shrinking the image has lost this. Merging the two together at this point with the clone brush took well over an hour as the final edge had to be blurred and not sharp. CA at the bottom of the moon was left in as to have removed that would probbly have taken another hour or more. Something I will do at a later date.

Lessons learnt for a future go is to take the cloud exposure and the final moon shot within 10 minutes of each other. As the sun moves so does the angle of the visible edge section of the moon. Unless the moon itself in the base exposure is in clear black sky there will be problems combining the images. I failed to do that on my first trial on Saturday night.

Stevie advises me that if the conditions are good we should have a Harvest Moon between 4 - 7th October. The moon will be full on the 7th.

Don

At the moment the moon is displaying a particularly high level of detail. Particularly good if you have a scope.

This is this evenings effort with 300mm f4.5 AIS Nikkor ( not by a long chalk, the sharpest pencil in Nikons box ) and 2x pretty rubbish converter, taken through high hazy cloud. ISO200, 1/100sec at f6.7.

Don

I noticed yesterday evening travelling on a motorway a glorious harvest moon on the horizon at 19:00 (approx). Weather forecast for this evening is clear and with excellent visibility, it might be one of the best opportunities to photograph the harvest moon in years.