Yet another 1st moon shot

[Electric Shepherd]

I thought the sky looked pretty clear last night here in the UK so thought I'd have a go at shooting the moon.

Regrettably the longest lens I've got is the crappy 75-300 III but it had to do. Tried spot metering but it still was blowing out the highlights so I applied -2 stops of correction in camera and shot this at f8 using live view zoomed in x10 on my 450d.

Sharpened and cropped in DPP, this a 100% crop on the original image. I like the relief on the craters, but the rest looks a bit of a fuzzy mess.

Other than a better lens [I know, I know...] is there anything else I should be doing?

[Celestron]

A little soft but still very nice . You can sharpen some in PS .

[Bernoulli]

It's not fuzzy, but it is overexposed. When shooting the moon, don't trust your exposure meter or any rules of thumb. Set your ISO at a low value, about 100, and bracket the exposure. Start at 1/1000 and work you way up to about 1/50 and you'll find the best exposure in there somewhere, probably around 1/250.

I did some PP to recover the exposure, and it's really a pretty good shot.

[Electric Shepherd]

Wow, thanks Rick!

I shot this in Raw so can easily go back and lower the brightness. I shot this at ISO 100 and I think the exposure ended up at around 1/60 or 1/80. I thought I was barking up the right tree with spot metering, but even that was obviously off to me hence my adjustment.

I'll watch my exposure much more carefully, thanks for the tip!

[Bernoulli]

And, here's your excuse to buy that longer lens!

Here's another PP tip. You'll notice how much brighter it is on the right than on the left near the terminator (line between dark and light, not a killer robot from the future). Selectively knock down the highlights to make the exposure more even over the entire disk. This works better than trying to recover the shadows.

[Electric Shepherd]

Thanks again Rick, I'll have a play with the exposure and highlight sliders and curves too later on and see what I can do.

[Electric Shepherd]

Here's a further edit based on Rick's suggestions:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3298/3588326063_16dec35922_o.jpg

[ssracer]

Not bad at all. Always shoot the moon on manual and ignore the meter....lol

I like to have it a little lighter than optimal, but not much, just to give a little more room to play with the curves in post processing to bring the features out more.

[Bernoulli]

So there was a good picture in there! Well done.

You might crop out some of that blackspace just for posting.

ssracer - I agree. His exposure is actually very good as a starting point for PP. No blown pixels along the right edge and most are crowded up towards the bright end. Like you said, this gives you more room to play with.

[artyman]

That looks pretty good for that lens, there is someone on another thread saying he can't get sharp shots of baseball with one!

[Nighthound]

That looks pretty good for that lens, there is someone on another thread saying he can't get sharp shots of baseball with one!

Shame there are no Lunar leagues. :D


Great work ES, you're off to a great start. Keep 'em coming.

[Peerie]

I think its an excellent image given the 75-300 lens. I like the colouring, the mare looks nice and smooth. Must try to maintain the colouring, not go too dark in these areas.

What tripod are you using?

I have had a brief play. Used shadows/highlights then unsharp mask. Not bothered with curves or levels.

John

[rumplepigskin]

I have the same lens and mine aren't coming out this good...

[Electric Shepherd]

Thanks guys!

Tripod was nothing fancy, a Manfrotto 190PROXB with a 488RC2 head.

Thanks Rumplepigskin, are you using a remote trigger with mirror lock up or live view [if your camera has it]? I didn't use a remote this time and first tried simply a 2s countdown but there were vibrations evident on the camera screen even 2s after pressing the trigger, so I went for a 10s countdown instead to allow time for any vibrations in the tripod to dampen. Vibrations from the mirror movement won't help either at this focal length and might cause a lack of clarity; you can keep the mirror out of the way by using mirror lock up or live view.

PS Nice edit John, when I tried something similar last night I thought it robbed contrast, but on balance I prefer your edit. I guess the rules are different for this kind of thing!

[Bill Boehme]

..... PS Nice edit John, when I tried something similar last night I thought it robbed contrast, but on balance I prefer your edit. I guess the rules are different for this kind of thing!

I prefer your edited version based on Rick's suggestion. John's edit looks good, but I think that it needs a bit more variation in brightness to make it look like a three dimensional sphere. If the lighting is too uniform, it might encourage the Flat Earth Society to think that they are right, after all. :D