Blood Moon and Uranus

[Vartok]

There may be a bit of photographer in Vartok, so the other day on the way to work I stopped in a field and pulled out the 600 mm on a cropped sensor to make it a 900 mm and took a few shots.  I am not fully satisfied with it but it was the best I could do that morning.  Surprisingly I did not see Rick's face in this one, he must have still been asleep.

V

[Ktrek]

What ISO and f stop settings did you use for the shot? Looks pretty cool as a smaller pic. Gets a little grainy when you view the full size image but still a nice shot.

Kevin

[Bromptonboy]

That is a great shot!  I just have a blurry cell phone pic.  :(

[Vartok]

Ktrek is perfectly correct about his assessment, hence my comment "not fully satisfied with it but it was the best I could do that morning."

Metadata: manual focus, f8, 1 sec, ISO 1250, 825 mm equiv on a cropped sensor D7000, spot metering, tripod.  ISO challenge was using a 150-600 mm lens f5.0-6 and being fast enough to avoid moon travel and camera shake (use mirror up and remote trip also); tough cookie!  And of course Uranus is but a dot.

V

[Ktrek]

Wow! D7000 is a heck of a nice camera! I wish I could afford one. I own a D5200. Do you think there might have been less grain if you had opened up the sensor more and maybe used an ISO 600 or 800? (I'm more of a fan of taking advantage of all the sensors pixels and cropping after but your way might be better) Also I was wondering if you had used a f10 or 12 setting then the moon would have been more in focus right? Or am I wrong here? I know doing that would have made Uranus more blurry but it would have been cool to see more of the moons details. I'm just asking here trying to learn myself. I was wanting to try and get some pics of that event myself but I slept through it. Oh well maybe next time. I was also curious about using HDR or if HDR is possible for that kind of a shot? Let me know what you think.

Kevin

[Vartok]

Well ISO 1250 is a relatively high ISO value already, any more would have invited much more grain.  I tried 100 ISO (think of ISO like the amplifier power) but the photo took too long with that slow lens and you get blur from the movement of the moon during exposure.  HDR is not viable for moon shots as taking an over and underexposure and combining it with a normal exposure works if you  are shooting bright and dark images at the same time.  The moon was pretty uniformly lit.  I tried HDR once and it doesn't add any value at all.  If I had gone for f10 or f12 that would have slowed the entire exposure more than the f8 I used.  Since the moon is basically at infinity distance the flat surface is like a flat surface at that distance.  The f8 makes the iris more open to speed up the shot.  In summary exposure is combination of three basic factors, which are

ISO = amplification of the sensor output for a given fixed input
Aperture = size of the iris for the lens, lower is more open
Speed = how long the shutter is open

I have found that shooting a full moon is relatively easy to manually focus but you have to close the f-stop at least two full stops from what the camera thinks it needs.  The blood moon with eclipse made the moon dim enough that it was tough to manually focus.

[Ktrek]

Thanks for the tips Vartok! I'm going to try to use those on the next full moon if we have clear skies here in Texas and see what I get. By the way I thought you might find this video really interesting of an object passing over the moon in deep space. Pretty cool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyT0qwJ9uHo#t=53

Kevin

[Vartok]

cool!