The Official Shoot the Moon Thread

I still can't seem to get a sharp image no matter what I do.

This is a re-do of my 10-4 Moon post. Much less PP on this one...

barkingspud wrote in post #15086655
This is a re-do of my 10-4 Moon post. Much less PP on this one...

looks way better this time.

ama168 wrote in post #15086634
I still can't seem to get a sharp image no matter what I do.

I think that your exposure is O.K. enough, but it's mainly your focus, as you say.
What you need to do is to make sure you have the below...

*Have your camera on a good, sturdy tripod
*Use your mirror Lock Up
*Use Live View along with zooming with it, (not the lens) using Manual Focus
*Use either a Remote Switch or your internal timer to ensure you won't have any blurring due to you touching the camera

You should get a lot better results after trying these.
(You may want to try some slight contrast afterwards too to give it a little more life-like punch, but not blowing out the highlights or making the darks too black)

Randy

last nights moon, from Tampa. was hazy out

here's one from last night

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andyman82 wrote in post #15091934
last nights moon, from Tampa. was hazy out

What the hell was this shot through...the window of an Apollo?

NICE!

2.12.2011

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Great shots!!!

andyman82 wrote in post #15091934
last nights moon, from Tampa. was hazy out

working on the sharpening and things... still learning that stuff

I feel like if we could see the dark side of the moon we could see extra terrestrials through your lens. Those shots are amazing.

Just shot this a few minutes ago. With my 5D3.

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Wow Rick, VERY nice. Equipment? (if you don't mind) That's the kind of shot I dream about.

Thanks Idealhobbies. This one was actually quite a process, like this:

First, pick the right time of year for shooting. This phase is almost directly overhead in fall (shot this Sept 7 about 4:00 am).

900 mm apo refractor, 2X barlow giving about 3000 mm EFL.
Canon 7D, ISO 100, raw

Test shots using shutter speeds from 1/2 sec to 1/50 sec. Settled on 1/8 sec based on in-camera histogram being to the right without blowing out pixels.

The entire moon wouldn't fit into the frame so it took three segments. Each part was shot eight times for 24 total exposures.

Everything is imported to Aperture. All 24 receive identical processing, at this stage levels and color correction only. Levels to center the histogram.

Export full-size TIFFs to a folder on the desktop and call up Photoshop. First, stack each set of eight to get the three segments. Do this with File -> Scripts -> Statistics on “mean” and “align sources”. This knocks the noise down a bunch.

Now, put the three parts together with File -> Automate -> Photomerge and crop. This gives a really large image with a lot of information. This master is 6500 x 4350 pixels, 90 x 60 inches at 72 dpi. File is 85M!

Reduce the size to something more manageable, in this case 800 x 1200 pixels. This further reduces noise.

At this point, the file looks like this:

Again.... WOW! Thank you for sharing.