Full Moon Over Denver

[Buddy Thomason]

http://www.fototime.com/219C138DFEB9C38/orig.jpg

1D MKII, EF500mm F4.0 L 'IS' with hood, 1.4 telextender, Gitzo G1327 mk2 carbon fiber tripod, Arca Swill monoball head, Wimberly side kick, cf 11 mirror lock-up, 2 second delay, shot RAW from under a street light in central Denver, PhotoShop CS - camera raw to adjust exposure and shadows using histogram, converted to 16 bit PSD, sharpened with unsharp mask 500/0.3/0 twice and 200/0.3/0 once, 5% black added, curves to my taste, final sharpening with Fred Miranda Intellisharpen II using a fine detail formula derived by experimentation, converted to 8 bit and sRGB color space (from Adobe RGB), cropped and sized for web. This was my 1st moon shot with some new gear. I was very pleasantly surprised.

[Mills]

I think that it is the best Moon shot that I have seen here. Great!

[cactusclay]

Nice shot.

[boomer1959]

WOW thats a good one :D

[sparker1]

Very good moon shot.

[pcasciola]

Excellent shot, Buddy, and thanks for detailing your post processing. I never tried those values for USM before, but it worked wonders on my moon shot from last night, too. Nothing like yours, but a huge improvement nonetheless. Thanks for sharing!!!!

[JZaun]

Nice job. The full moon is not easy to get pic's of!

JZ

[Buddy Thomason]

Thanks for your positive response - let's me know I'm at least on the right track! Forgot to mention the exposure settings - f11, 1/4 sec, -3 exposure compensation in 'P' mode. Several aperture settings between f11 to f22 produced useable images but -3 was always necessary to avoid blown out highlights. In this case the moon was only approximately 10-15 degrees above the horizon - no longer orange but not as intensely bright as when further up in the sky. I'm guessing that had something to do with the better than average result.

[TammieO]

This is one of the best moon shots I've seen. By the way, how do you like the Wimberly sidekick?

[Aethyr]

Awesome! I love that you can see the texture on the outer rim.

[Michaelmjc]

*It was a full moon over Memphis* That title reminded me of Armageddon by prism ;)



1D MKII, EF500mm F4.0 L 'IS' with hood, 1.4 telextender, Gitzo G1327 mk2 carbon fiber tripod, Arca Swill monoball head, Wimberly side kick, cf 11 mirror lock-up, 2 second delay, shot RAW from under a street light in central Denver, PhotoShop CS - camera raw to adjust exposure and shadows using histogram, converted to 16 bit PSD, sharpened with unsharp mask 500/0.3/0 twice and 200/0.3/0 once, 5% black added, curves to my taste, final sharpening with Fred Miranda Intellisharpen II using a fine detail formula derived by experimentation, converted to 8 bit and sRGB color space (from Adobe RGB), cropped and sized for web. This was my 1st moon shot with some new gear. I was very pleasantly surprised.

Try to say that twice, thats quite a mouthful.

Great shot by the way!

Mike

[mbze430]

that's alot of work to get that moon shot...... Looking at the Exif info I can see why.

[Jessica Rabbit]

I have never seen anything like that..... That is AWESOME

[Illegally_Alive]

Wow, I just shot the moon, and must admit am a little jealous!

[Michaelmjc]

Is that as far as you can zoom in? I never thought I'd see a picture like that from a camera. Only a telescope, the detail in it is just amazing.

That was taken with a 500mm lense, Imagine if you had a 800mm one. You would be seeing the man on the moon.

Great shot,
Mike

[wintermute76]

Awesome pic :)

[Buddy Thomason]

Thanks again folks! I really have to give credit to the gear - which is why I listed it all. Just amazing stuff. Sure it's expensive but when you really think about it - it's incredible that one can own such technology, at any cost.

TammyO - The Wimberley sidekick is excellent. Very high level fit and finish, intelligent design, thorough instructions obviously written by someone who has used the product extensively. It mates with the telephoto using a Wimberley P40 quick-release plate, and with the tripod's quick-release mechanism atop the ball head. The whole set-up allows you to place the center of the camera/lens mass right on top of the vertical center of the tripod - very stable. Frankly, it would be foolish to try and use a telephoto set-up of this size without something like the sidekick. Of course you could hand-hold it ...for a little while! Anyway, can't say enough good stuff about Wimberley products!

[Buddy Thomason]

A nice fellow on another forum offered this technical suggestion which I found helpful:
"I would say that the 0.25sec exposure (@ f11) is a little too long for a 500mm + 1.4 extender. I have done a quick calculation taking into account your lens, extender, sensor size, pixel density, moon's motion and exposure time and have come out with a motion of 1.4 pixels during your exposure. Taking the shot at f8 @ 1/125sec or even better f5.6 @1/250sec would have reduced this effect somewhat. I realise that f5.6 would be full aperture but the 500 + 1.4 combo is still claimed to be superb (wide open)."

I'll definitely try this next time around for a sharper image and thought I'd pass the info on here.

[stoneylonesome]

WOW! Fantastic shot, very very sharp

[Buddy Thomason]

Here's another 'full moon over Denver' shot from 8/19/05. It's a different approach from the one above. The gear is the same but this time I exposure locked on the clouds instead of the moon. 0.8s @ f16, ISO 800, focal length 700
http://www.fototime.com/B67FD93BDD3141C/orig.jpg

[Airedale1]

The first was great and the second even better. Just superb shots.

[kenyc]

Great moon shots, but the title is misleading unless you are going to include denver skyline or something.... :)

KAC

[TxLerman]

Wow!

[Buddy Thomason]

the title is misleading unless you are going to include denver skyline or something.... :)

Good point! Since you're in Denver too I'll tell you exactly where I was for each shot. I shot the first image from very near the 'high-point' in central Denver - Cranmer Park at 1st and Clermont Parkway. I was surprised the image was so sharp given all the 'pollution' I was looking through with the camera.

The second image was shot at an elevation of about 8,500' near the SE corner of Rocky Mountain National Park, extreme NW Boulder county. The sky appeared crystal clear but I was unable to capture a full moon image anywhere near as sharp as the first one - which is why I wound up working more with the clouds, and simply over-exposing the moon itself.

Unless I'm mistaken this proves something that astro-photographers and others who use telescopes know - that 'good' conditions for viewing celestial bodies is hard to discern with the naked eye and are not always related to perceived polution in the air. Assuming there will always be better viewing at higher elevations is incorrect. I don't know the whys and wherefores of this but guess it's related to the refractive properties of whatever is in the air between the lens and, in this case, the moon.

Your thoughts?

[Buddy Thomason]

Another shot of the full moon with clouds passing in front - an attempt to bring out a little moonscape detail but continue emphasis on the clouds:
http://www.fototime.com/B8F981617DB3FF9/orig.jpg

AND a little animated GIF file with the moon passing througth the camera's view:
http://www.fototime.com/0D7DB258D6B3731/orig.gif