Challenge "Moon Shot"

[Kathy2014]

I've never taken Moon Shot, tried many times but failed, as I dont have a good zoom, ...long time ago...since no Digital's world.......so I've changed my mind and focus only the Sun.

Since I dont have a good telescope for taking Moon picture, so I stop thinking about the Luna..oppss...Moon.

One years ago I have a small video camcorder and I can make really nice film and pictures. Great zoom shot too. One night , the moon is so temptation, full moon and so BEAUTIFUL.....

I ran to take tripot and fixed with the video camera....try to zoom the Moon ....first time of my life , since I've been photographing for so long....

WOW, what a miracle, I can zoom the moon so near and evern saw the shadow on the moon ....first time of my eyes. But little scared of the bad result of looking directly to the ray too. My eyes are kind of sensitive.

These are my one and only first time MOON SHOT.

I love you for a thousand years....

First focus.....

Come nearer....

Oh u r so beautiful....

[Robby nz]

My version of a moon shot.

With the early morning sun.

[MJP]

I've got a Pentax GPS thing called an Astrochaser. It determines where you are on the planet and the angles and wotnot, then moves the sensor to account for the Earth's rotation to maintain a static long exposure of up to five minutes.

Only thing is it's been cloudy since I got here. So no moon and stars.

Edited October 21, 2013 by MJP

[Kathy2014]

My second moon shot 2 weeks agoon a misty night. With camcorder camera.

[Tywais]

Nice night in Chiang Mai after daily rains. Taken tonight, Oct 22, 2013.

Panasonic DMC-GH2, lens LUMIX G VARIO 100-300/F4.0-5.6 (846mm equivalent) f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/320 Second, +.33EV, Spot Metering. Hand held but braced on a balcony rail. Straight from camera, no post.

[MJP]

Nice night in Chiang Mai after daily rains. Taken tonight, Oct 22, 2013.

Panasonic DMC-GH2, lens LUMIX G VARIO 100-300/F4.0-5.6 (846mm equivalent) f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/320 Second, +.33EV, Spot Metering. Hand held but braced on a balcony rail. Straight from camera, no post.

Hand held!!!!

Big thumbs up.

[Kathy2014]

Full moon on Hua Hin Beach 2 years ago.

[Tywais]

Hand held!!!!

Big thumbs up.

Thanks MJP. I've gained a lot of experience over time for these type of shots and have it down nearly pat. The GH2 is a complex camera with what seems infinite configuration options but I've reduced my needs to a handful of the photo options.

I nearly always shoot in program mode now as I found that there is a higher probability of a bad shot in auto mode depending on the conditions. Some prefer to always use aperture priority but program priority gives me control of all the 3 primary exposure modes f-stop/aperture and ISO with shutter speed left up to the camera to decide but adjusting the others allows changing it.

In this case I locked the ISO to 200 as the moon is a very bright source of light. Set the aperture to maximum, which is 5.6 for the long end of the zoom. Check the shutter speed that the camera decides on and if it is too low, bump the ISO up a notch. In this case, you can see the speed is 1/320 of a second and combine the Mega-IS of the lens that adds 3+ stops to the exposure. Still, at an effective zoom of 846mm in this case, the moon still wants to drift out of center if I breath so needed to brace it some and hold my breath. The tripod is just a pain to setup and time consuming so haven't used it much anymore.

The camera has 4 1:1 crop modes. 16:9, 4:3, 3:2 and 1:1 which increases the effective zoom in some of the modes as it only uses the central part of the sensor for that crop factor. In video mode, the 1:1 also known as ex-teleconverter, only uses the 1920x1080 center part of the sensor giving me a 2.6x increase in optical zoom or around 1560 mm focal length. That does require a tripod as the slightest motion and the target of interest just jumps out of view with just a twitch of the hand. Then there is an additional 4x digital zoom which moves it out to 6240mm focal length but I hardly ever use that as I can do that post processing if necessary.

The best moon shots are when it is not at full. Quarter/half/ or 3/4 full works best as you have the high contrast edges of the moon giving a 3D shadow effect of the craters on the edge. When full, there is very little contrast except the moon against the background.

[MJP]

Hand held!!!!

Big thumbs up.

Thanks MJP. I've gained a lot of experience over time for these type of shots and have it down nearly pat. The GH2 is a complex camera with what seems infinite configuration options but I've reduced my needs to a handful of the photo options.

I nearly always shoot in program mode now as I found that there is a higher probability of a bad shot in auto mode depending on the conditions. Some prefer to always use aperture priority but program priority gives me control of all the 3 primary exposure modes f-stop/aperture and ISO with shutter speed left up to the camera to decide but adjusting the others allows changing it.

In this case I locked the ISO to 200 as the moon is a very bright source of light. Set the aperture to maximum, which is 5.6 for the long end of the zoom. Check the shutter speed that the camera decides on and if it is too low, bump the ISO up a notch. In this case, you can see the speed is 1/320 of a second and combine the Mega-IS of the lens that adds 3+ stops to the exposure. Still, at an effective zoom of 846mm in this case, the moon still wants to drift out of center if I breath so needed to brace it some and hold my breath. The tripod is just a pain to setup and time consuming so haven't used it much anymore.

The camera has 4 1:1 crop modes. 16:9, 4:3, 3:2 and 1:1 which increases the effective zoom in some of the modes as it only uses the central part of the sensor for that crop factor. In video mode, the 1:1 also known as ex-teleconverter, only uses the 1920x1080 center part of the sensor giving me a 2.6x increase in optical zoom or around 1560 mm focal length. That does require a tripod as the slightest motion and the target of interest just jumps out of view with just a twitch of the hand. Then there is an additional 4x digital zoom which moves it out to 6240mm focal length but I hardly ever use that as I can do that post processing if necessary.

The best moon shots are when it is not at full. Quarter/half/ or 3/4 full works best as you have the high contrast edges of the moon giving a 3D shadow effect of the craters on the edge. When full, there is very little contrast except the moon against the background.

Hand held and only ISO200! Had O.I.S on my LX5, Panasonic do make a fine camera.

Second the tripod. I'm just too darn lazy and the damn thing's a 5-section too!

I have one of these . . .

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pentax-Astrotracer-O-GPS1-Unit-DSLR/dp/B0054YKVBK

I actually bought it for determining where photos of mud and stockpiles of mud and excavations of mud (seriously!) had been taken on site, it's quite accurate too. It has this Astrochaser function that moves the sensor in the camera to track the rotation of Planet Earth for exposures up to 5 minutes without star trails. Not tried it yet, Roi-Et is persistently smothered in cloud and the council have decided to put a very bright street light across the way, illuminating a rarely used dirt road (?!!!) thus causing light pollution in my back garden.

My brother is a keen astronomer (LOL! he's like Sir Patrick Moore), saving up for some sort of mini-observatory telescope at the moment which will likely only leave his living room twice. Once he does, I'm going to get a DSLR mount for it and get into deep space astrophotography (really challenging stuff, still don't understand 'stacking').

[Tywais]

My brother is a keen astronomer (LOL! he's like Sir Patrick Moore), saving up for some sort of mini-observatory telescope at the moment which will likely only leave his living room twice. Once he does, I'm going to get a DSLR mount for it and get into deep space astrophotography (really challenging stuff, still don't understand 'stacking').

I used to be into astronomy a long time ago and had a 60mm refractor. Seemed to get more terrestrial use then astronomical though.

When I was shooting last night and moving the camera around to try and find the moon, at that focal length the FOV is pretty narrow, I found a spot source on the screen. Knowing this time of year and the proximity to the moon it was Venus. Figured to try and take a shot of it but didn't think it through at all. After pressing the shutter knew what a screw up this was going to be as the shutter speed was counting down from 16 seconds! The result was not pretty.

[MJP]

My brother is a keen astronomer (LOL! he's like Sir Patrick Moore), saving up for some sort of mini-observatory telescope at the moment which will likely only leave his living room twice. Once he does, I'm going to get a DSLR mount for it and get into deep space astrophotography (really challenging stuff, still don't understand 'stacking').

I used to be into astronomy a long time ago and had a 60mm refractor. Seemed to get more terrestrial use then astronomical though.

When I was shooting last night and moving the camera around to try and find the moon, at that focal length the FOV is pretty narrow, I found a spot source on the screen. Knowing this time of year and the proximity to the moon it was Venus. Figured to try and take a shot of it but didn't think it through at all. After pressing the shutter knew what a screw up this was going to be as the shutter speed was counting down from 16 seconds! The result was not pretty.

venus.jpg

Yikes!!!

One thing with digital, at least our shots are free! Imagine the ongoing cost of film?

I think because we can afford to make mistakes using digital, ultimately we learn more and much faster and EXIF data plays a big part in this.

[MJP]

The price of (very clever) Pentax tracking system was USD200. What are the prices of standalone tracking systems where it's possible to lay the camera and the tracker would do the rest (continuously move how the earth moves in these latitudes)?

I think it's called a motorized equatorial mount. My brother looks at these things and then bangs on about nebulas and other Patrick Moore stuff and I drift off into a doze. They can be had for less than £1000 but of course, as with anything optical, skies the limit

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/MOUNTS.HTM

[Tywais]

Loi Krathong moon Chiang Mai Nov. 17, 2013

[Tywais]

Trying to get photos every few days to sequence the moon shots if the clouds stay away. As you can see, when you start getting away from a full moon the contrasts on the craters gets greater due to shadowing giving it more of a 3D effect and less flat than the previous one. This one also Chiang Mai, November 23, 2013.

[Kathy2014]

Trying to get photos every few days to sequence the moon shots if the clouds stay away. As you can see, when you start getting away from a full moon the contrasts on the craters gets greater due to shadowing giving it more of a 3D effect and less flat than the previous one. This one also Chiang Mai, November 23, 2013.

Wow...great shot...thumps up !

[MJP]

The First Photograph of The Moon

One of the first pictures ever taken of the moon by Dr. J. W. Draper of New York, 1840.

http://lightbox.time.com/2013/12/20/the-first-photograph-of-the-moon/#1

[Tywais]

Just stuck my 100-300mm (200-600mm equivalent) lens on my EM-1 to see what it can do on it and it did well. Have nearly the exact same moon phase taken with that lens and my GH2 and this one was noticeably sharper. My first try with it on the EM-1 a few days ago was tragic as it kept getting blown out. Hadn't learned all the controls yet and finally set it to spot focus and spot metering and it locked focus immediately and not blown out. Problem was, I had the metering set to overall average and with a black background and bright white spot, well you can guess.

[Tywais]

Topic getting stale so thought I would bring up another shot taken tonight. Near half moon in Chiang Mai. Handheld, Olympus OMD-EM1, 100-300mm (200-600mm equivalent) f/5.6 ISO 3200, 1/1000s exposure, spot metering and spot focusing.

[MJP]

^^ It's just too cold to go outside and look, T.

I'm considering having central heating fitted.

[Tywais]

^^ It's just too cold to go outside and look, T.

I'm considering having central heating fitted.

I have an electric radiator heater next to my computer desk. Set the camera settings up first then jumped out out on the balcony, took some snaps, jumped back into my warm office. 15C in CM at the moment.

[manarak]

23.10.2010 on a restaurant boat on the Chao Praya.

Canon 550D, Tamron 18-270 VC, handheld.

not too nice :-/

Edited January 22, 2014 by manarak

[MJP]

^^ It's just too cold to go outside and look, T.

I'm considering having central heating fitted.

I have an electric radiator heater next to my computer desk. Set the camera settings up first then jumped out out on the balcony, took some snaps, jumped back into my warm office. 15C in CM at the moment.

It's about 12C in here right now.

I'm heading into London on Wednesday and for some odd reason only known to the deep recesses of by little brain I thought "Oooo . . . it'll be warm in London."

Then I realized I left there last summer. . . . and I have a pair of Crocs and no coat.

When I land it'll be -3C and raining.

[draggons]

It's not Thailand but I thought the composition was pretty good.

[Tywais]

Hazy night in Chiang Mai and low moon makes for a colorful shot.

[MJP]

Meyer Optik Gorlitz Orestegor 300/4 at f/11, 100th sec, ISO 100 . . . needs a longer lens . . .

[rhythmworx]

I'be been looking forward to this oilinki for a few weeks, even though I don't really have a suitable lens.

Problem is it's the cloudiest day I have ever seen, hopefully a break in the clouds will come and help enhance the shot but it doesn't look like it will.

[Goshawk]

I also took an video with the Canon SX50HS superzoom to present how far does the zoom go.

I love mine too, and the SX60 HS (or whatever they're gonna call it) is likely to be unveiled at photokina in a couple of weeks . . . rumoured to have a 100x optical zoom.

. . . bated breath.

[Kan Win]

Oh My Gosh! is back.

Welcome

Now ask mummy if you could take your toys out of the pram and post them/some once again

Yours, Win as always

[Goshawk]

^

at ease Colonel . . . deleted my main flickr account yonks ago, and all the pretty pictures flew away with it - and still no new host yet . . . i'm so lazy . .

[boldface]

Hi Folks. Sorry to but in with my amateur hour picture. I am just taking up photography as a hobby having been gifted a D90.

Anyway, I was waiting for a fullish moon which tonight brought (Pattaya) taken with the af-s 70-300 nikkor lens. This was at F11, shutter speed 3200 - the clearest out of half an hour fiddling with the nobs trying to get it better. Had to give up after the moon (which moves surprisingly fast) jumped behind some power cables and I was too lazy to chase it. On a tripod as well. Will try a half moon and will spend some time learning the ropes a bit more as well;any tips gladly received though.