Moon photos

Jul 29, 2012
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Very nice pictures. Well done, Vern.
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Don Haines

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Jun 4, 2012
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Super blood moon last night. Not a great image as it was quite windy and cold, so I think the atmosphere was quite turbulent. Even with faster shutters, the details were not sharp.

Still, a nice photo.

I did not have clear skies, light snow falling, but you could make out the moon and see it happening, but as the eclipse progressed it got completely lost in the blowing snow. I'll post my pictures when I get home tonight.
 
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stevelee

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Jul 6, 2017
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I set up the tripod and put the 100-400mm lens on my camera and started making pictures during the eclipse last night. I got some fairly normal looking pictures.
IMG_1681.jpg
IMG_1744.jpg

As totality approached and the moon moved closer to straight overhead, the difficulties of finding the moon on the screen at all and keeping it in the picture and touching up focus became more trouble than it was worth. My tripod and ball head were really not up to the task, and the photographer wasn't so good either. So I gave up.

But I kept going back outside to view just before totality and a few more times during that hour. At 12:07 am, not long before the midpoint, I decided for grins I would take my G7X II out and see what I could get with it. I made manual settings by guessing and set manual focus on ∞. I put the ISO on 3200, which is noisier on this little camera than I'm used to on my 6D2. Still, I wound up with what I think is an interesting shot, showing the color (not enhanced in Photoshop) and even a fair number of stars, more than show up in this JPEG.
IMG_5220.jpg
 
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Don Haines

Beware of cats with laser eyes!
Jun 4, 2012
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As totality approached and the moon moved closer to straight overhead, the difficulties of finding the moon on the screen at all and keeping it in the picture and touching up focus became more trouble than it was worth. My tripod and ball head were really not up to the task, and the photographer wasn't so good either. So I gave up.

I ran into the same problem ages ago, the tripod head was great for tracking things down low, but terrible for above. Since it was a panic job and no time to order one in, I grabbed a steel bar and made an L bracket.

Also, shooting overhead is one of those times that I really like an articulating screen.
 
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snappy604

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Jan 25, 2017
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in hindsight, the extra reach of the 1.4x TC was offset signifcantly by the change in aperture. F9 was best I could do with my 80d, 600 Sigma and 1.4x TC... once the exclipse came in, the light loss was too high.. had to resort to 4000 ISO at 1/4th of a second.. grainy as heck and dim :-/... wondering I might recover more with some additional post processing, but doubt it (longing for a nice FF one day)
 
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stevelee

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I ran into the same problem ages ago, the tripod head was great for tracking things down low, but terrible for above. Since it was a panic job and no time to order one in, I grabbed a steel bar and made an L bracket.

Also, shooting overhead is one of those times that I really like an articulating screen.

I was definitely using the articulating screen. I didn't even try to look through the viewfinder even when the moon was a bit lower at the beginning of the partial phase. And I wanted the mirror locked up anyway. I didn't much use the screen on my old T3i until I shot the solar eclipse a couple months before I got the 6D2. Besides a more convenient viewing angle, the screen could be moved into the shadow of the camera to give a little more visibility. That, of course, wasn't a factor with the moon.

For the shot with the G7X II I had already moved the flippy screen so I could look down while the camera looked up. I have used that a lot in shooting domes and up into spires in my travels.

Maybe by 2033, or whenever it is, I can save up enough money to buy a more suitable tripod for the project.
 
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Don Haines

Beware of cats with laser eyes!
Jun 4, 2012
8,246
1,939
Canada
I ran into the same problem ages ago, the tripod head was great for tracking things down low, but terrible for above. Since it was a panic job and no time to order one in, I grabbed a steel bar and made an L bracket.

Also, shooting overhead is one of those times that I really like an articulating screen.
After making my emergency L bracket, I decided to create the ultimate L bracket so that I could centre the focal point of the camera over the centre of the tripod for panorama shooting. A couple of chunks of aluminum from the scraps bin, and a couple of lunch hours with the milling machine, and voila!

581461BE-D6BB-4EC9-A510-9BF73E879E00.jpegE149CA38-6D64-4D90-9431-95D1ADE395D5.jpeg6E6C82FE-9E0A-40B5-9135-31265308265F.jpeg
 
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After making my emergency L bracket, I decided to create the ultimate L bracket so that I could centre the focal point of the camera over the centre of the tripod for panorama shooting. A couple of chunks of aluminum from the scraps bin, and a couple of lunch hours with the milling machine, and voila!

View attachment 182776View attachment 182777View attachment 182778

I love this type of DIY photo stuff. I made something similar to this myself but not nearly as pro as this one.Well done.
 
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stevelee

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I did a little better JPEG conversion for my home page of the G7X II picture:

wolfmoon.jpg

I selected the stars and used the Levels controls to brighten them a bit so they would show up after the size conversion. I still didn't adjust the color of the moon. From the other shots here I gather that it was a little more coppery in color, so mine is a little off on the magenta side. I guess I had the little camera set to AWB, so maybe not so bad for that. I also didn't apply any noise reduction to the moon. I was afraid of losing detail. I knew I'd get some noise with ISO 3200 on a 1" sensor, but in the few moments I thought about settings, I was afraid of more blur with a longer shutter speed, especially hand-held. The stars appear sharp enough to suggest that shake was not a problem, and the infinity focus worked fine.
 
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Jun 11, 2013
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I did a little better JPEG conversion for my home page of the G7X II picture:

View attachment 182793

I selected the stars and used the Levels controls to brighten them a bit so they would show up after the size conversion. I still didn't adjust the color of the moon. From the other shots here I gather that it was a little more coppery in color, so mine is a little off on the magenta side. I guess I had the little camera set to AWB, so maybe not so bad for that. I also didn't apply any noise reduction to the moon. I was afraid of losing detail. I knew I'd get some noise with ISO 3200 on a 1" sensor, but in the few moments I thought about settings, I was afraid of more blur with a longer shutter speed, especially hand-held. The stars appear sharp enough to suggest that shake was not a problem, and the infinity focus worked fine.

I used the daylight setting in the color balance and did not readjust in post. You could probably make that change easily - if desired.
 
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