Moon

[Plumcrak]

Just a couple of shots when I got home, after a couple shots.

1/800, f5.8, iso 400

[Donald]

Jon - You'll see that, down at the bottom left of the page, I've put an 'astrophotography' tag on this, so people in the future doing searches fro moon shots, will see yours alongside the other that can be viewed from that tag.

The craters out at the edge are showing up well. But I wonder if there was too much atmospheric interference to allow you to pick up much detail from the rest of the surface?

[Fit]

Is this an example of chromatic aberration?

[Plumcrak]

Jon - You'll see that, down at the bottom left of the page, I've put an 'astrophotography' tag on this, so people in the future doing searches fro moon shots, will see yours alongside the other that can be viewed from that tag.

The craters out at the edge are showing up well. But I wonder if there was too much atmospheric interference to allow you to pick up much detail from the rest of the surface?

Donald, the last couple time I have tried to shoot the moon this is what I get, detail along one edge, but none across the surface. Could it be that my canon powershot sx30is does not have the capabilities to get this detail. (the correct answer that I am looking for is "YES, you need to upgrade your camera". It might help me convince my wife.

[FrankMi]

Hi Jon, if I could offer a suggestion here... The reason you see the craters more prominently along the edge is that the angle of the sun is casting significant shadow at that point. Think about the contrasts you see at the morning and evening of a sunny day. The bulk of the moon is being lit by mostly a noon-day sun and lacks the defining shadows.

I have been considering making a composite of the moon from multiple images where the shadows are in different positions on the moon's surface as it revolves around the earth and catches the suns rays as it moves from new moon to full moon. It might take quite a while to get enough really good images but it would be a fun project.

Having said that, yes, you need to upgrade your camera as any increase in sensor resolution and/or telephoto zoom capability will benefit your goal! (Does that help?)

[Plumcrak]

Thanks Frank, It is working...she is starting to soften up a little bit.

[elfbob]

jon, i have done full moon shots with a sony DSC-H2 that has 1/2.5 sensor & a canon eos 50D with much larger sensor, either is capable up to a certain point as long as the lowest ISO is used( the full moon is bright enough for near native iso use) coupled with a good tripod;most lens have "sweet spots" where max sharpness occurs in an aperture range; if you are using any function other than M you might want to use center weighted metering, if you are using auto focus it matters where the metering "box" is at on the moons surface;just a simple thing like using exposure compensation of 0, -2/3,-1-1/3, etc can amplify crater detail by enhancing shadows, if you're focusing head on at a crater there's no edge contrast to "outline"it; its true that a larger sensor with more megapixels allows tighter cropping before the cropped pixels lose "resolution"; there are many "nuances" that can be used if you 1st explore what your camera is capable of; white balance can be changed for creative emphasis; i personally use M & RAW much of the time in an attempt to record what i see in my "mind's eye", but Aperture or Shutter priority are very good alternatives depending on your "vision".

[Plumcrak]

Thanks for your input Robert. I continue to play with this.
this was taken at 6am today


and this one at 8:30am

[ajohnw]

Might be worth adding a comment about focal length and the moon. Curiously it has an angular diameter close to 1/2 degree. Some sources say exactly but pass on that. This means that a 1000mm focal length lens will project an 8.75mm diameter image on the sensor in the camera. Crop factors etc don't come into that.

There is a good page on moon photography here http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTRO...OD/TRIPOD4.HTM

I suspect much of the info that is about relates to film. I have done a bit of that on a 10 inch newtonian F8 telescope.

For maximum detail on sensors that would come out at 20 odd mp at 35mm size I would suggest shooting at F8 if you can. F11 may start to show some fuzziness due to diffraction problems. Much depends on the quality of the lens. The resolution that can be obtained is a little more complicated than just number of pixels under the image. There is info about related to telescopes and here you will see the main interest is often the diameter of the lens used as this sets the angular resolution. The focal length of a given sized lens then sets it's image scale. The 2 can then be related to pixel size. People have produced some amazing images with just a web cam. These are called mosaics (ie panoramas) taken at various times as the shadow moves across the surface of the moon bringing out crater details. Others just shoot the entire moon in one night eg

http://www.lunarworldrecord.com/image.php

and some info on doing this sort of thing for if anyone is ever tempted.

http://celestialwonders.com/articles...aic/index.html

John

[Dave Humphries]

Donald, the last couple time I have tried to shoot the moon this is what I get, detail along one edge, but none across the surface. Could it be that my canon powershot sx30is does not have the capabilities to get this detail. (the correct answer that I am looking for is "YES, you need to upgrade your camera". It might help me convince my wife.

Hi Jon,

YES, you need to upgrade your camera - to one that shoots RAW.
I trust the cheque is in the post

The very low contrast tones and lack of edges in the 'full frontal' lit portions of the moon are exactly the kind of detail that jpgs throw away because they 'think' they are unimportant, it may also explain the colour blotches (on the first shot).

That said, with the aforementioned lighting angle on the features, you're never going to see much, even with a Local Contrast Enhanced RAW shot I suspect.

You could try reducing the image size and sharpening before uploading.
You posted the 6am shot (which is quite good by the way) at 1600w x 1200h.
If you haven't already, use USM at 20%, 200px, 0th, then downsize to 1200 x 900, then sharpen with USM at 100%, 0.3px, 0 or 1 threshold.

Cheers,

[ajohnw]

You could also get more out of jpg. It's fairly normal to process astro shots of any sort more heavily than what is generally used. I used low and mid tone mapping on this one as far as I could without increasing the over exposed parts by much and boosted the black pixels a little. Then unsharp mask - astro people might use so much of that post blurring would be needed. Then used a utility to stretch the contrast. After all a lot of the problem is down to the atmosphere. This is the result done very quickly. The original is pretty good really.





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