Can someone debunk this Peter Lik picture... PLEASE!!!

[arussarts]

Not that I like him but a friend and I keep tabs on Peter Lik, not because we like his work, but because he seems to be a fantastic marketer. 

He recently posted this picture: http://www.lik.com/thework/newrelease.html

He implies that this was pure camera work but to me it is obviously FAKE!!!

Can anyone here prove this?  I downloaded the picture but am not meta-savvy enough to find anything.

[Fleetie]

Well it is a breathtaking image, but one thing does occur to me immediately:

The full moon is very bright; basically you need to use "sunny f/16" for it, i.e. an exposure roughly equivalent to setting f/16 and then using exposure time = 1/ISO, i.e. 1/100 for ISO100.

With such a low exposure, I really don't think you'd ever see stars in the sky the way that you see them there.

So it seems to me that some tricks have been played with exposure here, so that both moon and stars are visible and visually-pleasing as they are in the image.


EDIT: I just checked one of mine of the crescent Moon and a castle lit at night. The Moon was showing Earthshine. I wanted to get the Earthshine on the moon, so I had to give it lots of ISO and exposure, so that the sunlit part of the Moon is way, WAY overexposed. Yet I still can't see stars here, or at least not bright like in the image you cited.

Here's a crop from that photo I took - the site wouldn't let me upload the whole picture, even when I reduced its file size below the stated 4MB limit.

[Fleetie]

Oh; and another problem with it is that if you gave the Moon that much telephoto magnification, AND it was so low, being just above the horizon, you would pretty much always get significant distortion of the image of the Moon from air currents and shimmering.

I don't think you'd ever be lucky enough with the weather and the air condition to get such a clean image of it as that, with the Moon still right down at the horizon, shooting through dozens of miles of dense Earth atmosphere.


To me, this issue alone is enough to kill the image's claim to be untouched. I also think it's a composite.

[jerome2710]

The edges of the moon look way to clean in my opinion.

Shouldn't you see some kraters on the edges...?

[tt]

Sounds very much like he's been thinking how to get the shot. It's "just so". Big lens, exactly the right line up of moon rock and tree. Don't see why he can't be telling the truth. It's a fantastic shot. Doesn't automatically mean it's a fake because of it. Just real hard to do yourself.

He's in the desert. Good quality, cold and real dark.
He's scouted the moon phase (and presumably the time of year) and also location for the silhouette foreground.

Most people have seen an amazing harvest moon. This is kind of like that, no?

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Every image is post processed.  Even film shots were post processed during printing.  The operator adjusted color when you sent it to be printed, or a master photographer would print his own and extensively adjust, dodge, burn, etc.  Thats normal. 

My first thought was that it was a composite of two or more images.  Unless you have the original raw image, you cannot determine for sure, just guess.

At any rate, it is a beautiful image.

[steven63]

Yeah this is not an untouched photo.  In fact I tend to believe this is two photos and he layered them together in photoshop.

1.  The moon is not that big.  Period.
2.  As Fleetie mentions, you can't shoot the moon through that much atmosphere w/o getting a ton of distortion - not necessarily from polution, but simply from the air. It's the same reason they put telescopes high on mountains - to eliminate as much air as possible.  Supposedly shot at such a low angle, the air is much thicker than simply shot straight overhead.

Heck it could be 3 photos layers together since the stars are visible and so close (right next) to the moon.

I call BS on his claim.

[traveller]

What makes you think this image is fake?

If it's the fact that the moon is well exposed and so is the tower, then I'd guess you could do this using strobes or lighting. 

Edit: Yeah, I think I was looking at the wrong image there, the Peter Lik shot doesn't really look natural to me.  I could be wrong -astrophotography isn't my expertise. 

[lol]

My first thought when I saw that was "Photoshop!". For starters, the dark part of the moon can't be darker than the sky. You would see the lighter of the moon or the sky. Given the sky is so blue, it would have easily out-shone the black of the dark part of the moon.

The edges of the moon look way to clean in my opinion.

Shouldn't you see some kraters on the edges...?

Not at that scale. The surface features don't stick out that much. For a random selection of moon shots I've taken through the years as comparison, see here.

1.  The moon is not that big.  Period.

The moon can be that big, if you have a big enough lens. I've shot the full moon on many occasions with my 1325mm scope, on crop sensor. Depending on how close the moon is (it isn't fixed!) it can fit inside an APS-C frame or not. Roughly speaking, you need 2000mm ball park to fill a full frame shot with the moon. Ok, that sounds like a LOT for a photographic lens, but you can get that ball park in telescopes relatively cheaply.

[Kernuak]

In sub-zero temperatures on clear, cloudless nights, moisture in the air becomes heavier and drops (forming dew/frost etc.). Cold, clear nights are always much clearer, the stars look brighter and don't seem to shimmer, so does the moon. The desert would naturally have less pollution (and moisture), removing that from the equation too to a large degree. Also, at the relatively low resolution, any imperfections wouldn't show up. I think on that score, it can't be debunked. However, the differences in exposure between the moon and stars are problematic. It isn't something I've tried, so I don't know if there would be enough dynamic range to show both or not, but post-processing would help to even up the differences too. Without trying, I don't know whether it is possible to even up the exposures or not. Another possibility is a blend of two TIFFs from a single RAW file.

[Penn Jennings]

Can anyone guess at the required focal length for this shot?  Maybe a 500mm f/4 and 2x?

[AprilForever]

Yeah this is not an untouched photo.  In fact I tend to believe this is two photos and he layered them together in photoshop.

1.  The moon is not that big.  Period.
2.  As Fleetie mentions, you can't shoot the moon through that much atmosphere w/o getting a ton of distortion - not necessarily from polution, but simply from the air. It's the same reason they put telescopes high on mountains - to eliminate as much air as possible.  Supposedly shot at such a low angle, the air is much thicker than simply shot straight overhead.

Heck it could be 3 photos layers together since the stars are visible and so close (right next) to the moon.

I call BS on his claim.

The moon is that big. Moreover, I have taken pictures of the moonrise at 600 MM with no real distortion from the airwaves. What looks odd to me is the exposure. Looks like he was using an 800 mm lens...

[Kernuak]

Can anyone guess at the required focal length for this shot?  Maybe a 500mm f/4 and 2x?

Several years ago, when I first got my 400D, I tried a few shots of the moon with an old M42 screwmount Carl Zeiss Jena 70-300, with a Helios 3x teleconverter and it filled the frame to a similar degree. Judging by that, assuming the image is uncropped, then it would work out to around 1400mm on a full frame sensor.

[WildBill]

In his write up he talked about a long night waiting for the shot.  However during a full moon (or almost full moon) the moon rises at about the same time as the sun sets.  For the moon to appear full it must be on the opposite side of the earth from the sun.   Since he stated that this was a moon rise, this event should have happened very close to sunset.  Therefore his comment about a long night is total BS unless he goes to bed very very early.

[Kernuak]

In his write up he talked about a long night waiting for the shot.  However during a full moon (or almost full moon) the moon rises at about the same time as the sun sets.  For the moon to appear full it must be on the opposite side of the earth from the sun.   Since he stated that this was a moon rise, this event should have happened very close to sunset.  Therefore his comment about a long night is total BS unless he goes to bed very very early.

The colours would also suggest that it was around either sunset or sunrise.