Couple of moon shots

Jack'll do

Although the full moon isn't untill tonight. I thought I'd start early case the weathers not good tonight. These were taken Tue. night. Wed. and Thu. proved too cloudy for descent images.
C&C appreciated.

InsuredDisaster

What kinda lens did you use? They are really detailed. They seem a tad yellow though.

geospatial_junkie

I would also be curious to know what lens you used. I find it real tough to get good moon shots (using a 200-500mm tamron with a 2x telecoverter). The shutterspeed has to be fairly quick to get really sharp images I find.:D

Here is one I took and for the life of me, I can't get a sharper photo!

geospatial_junkie

O.K.... now you've got me all excited to take moon pics again. Good thing tonight is Friday...

Jack'll do

InsuredDisaster wrote:

What kinda lens did you use? They are really detailed. They seem a tad yellow though.

Nikon D80 and Nikor AF 300mm f/2.8 ED
The yellowing increased when I adjusted brightness/contrast, curves, and applied usm. This PP significantly improved the details. See my response to the next viewer. As you can see in the original photo below it is a bit yellow/orange perhaps because it was taken about 1/2 hr after sundown. I live atop a small mountain with no ambient light after dark and very clear air. Last night there were some thin clouds and the moon was positively orange at 9PM

Jack'll do

geospatial_junkie wrote:

I would also be curious to know what lens you used. I find it real tough to get good moon shots (using a 200-500mm tamron with a 2x telecoverter). The shutterspeed has to be fairly quick to get really sharp images I find.:D

Here is one I took and for the life of me, I can't get a sharper photo!

Nikkor AF 300mm f/2.8 ED
exif f/8 1/125sec iso 100

The image posted above was PP'ed as follows. brightness/contrast, curves then cropped to 800x600 and usm applied.

Here is the original image cropped to 800x600 with no PP



Here's the original image cropped to 800x600 with usm applied. Note that the b/c and curves in PP significantly improve the detail in my original post.

geospatial_junkie

Sounds good. Fortunately, because of my focal length, mine if full-frame.

I'm going to borrow a telescope off a friend of mine and try shooting through the viewfinder of the telescope and see what results I can get.:D

Jack'll do

geospatial_junkie wrote:

Sounds good. Fortunately, because of my focal length, mine if full-frame.

I'm going to borrow a telescope off a friend of mine and try shooting through the viewfinder of the telescope and see what results I can get.:D

Mine is a 100% crop. With a 500mm lens and 2x TC you should get better results. You do have a lot of detail there. Did you do any PP? If not you should at least try curves and/or b/c and since you resized quite a bit apply unsharp mask on the image you posted. If the posted image is right out of the camera I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Also did you use a very sturdy tripod?

geospatial_junkie

Jack'll do wrote:

Mine is a 100% crop. With a 500mm lens and 2x TC you should get better results. You do have a lot of detail there. Did you do any PP? If not you should at least try curves and/or b/c and since you resized quite a bit apply unsharp mask on the image you posted. If the posted image is right out of the camera I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Also did you use a very sturdy tripod?

1. I applied unsharpen mask in LAB colour, but not to the point to getting artifacts on the photo. The native size of the photo is close to 18 inches long and about 11 inches wide.:D

2. No curves were applied because I would lose too much detail and it would increase the noise level of the photo.

3. I have a Benbo tripod with Bogen legs as well as a Gitzo. I'm not sure which one I used, but they can take up to 18-20 lbs. I also used a remote shutter release.

geospatial_junkie

Here is a version with more unsharpen mask added to it:



Its great for the web, put in print you can start to see the grain as well as the red abberations in some of the mesa's and craters. They can PS'd out... I'm just lazy.

Jack'll do

geospatial_junkie wrote:

1. I applied unsharpen mask in LAB colour, but not to the point to getting artifacts on the photo. The native size of the photo is close to 18 inches long and about 11 inches wide.:D

2. No curves were applied because I would lose too much detail and it would increase the noise level of the photo.

3. I have a Benbo tripod with Bogen legs as well as a Gitzo. I'm not sure which one I used, but they can take up to 18-20 lbs. I also used a remote shutter release.

Good grief Will I should have looked at your homepage before I posted that last. You know what they say about assuming Sorry.
Why do you suppose that curves and b/c improved the detail in mine?

Jack'll do

geospatial_junkie wrote:

Here is a version with more unsharpen mask added to it:

Its great for the web, put in print you can start to see the grain as well as the red abberations in some of the mesa's and craters. They can PS'd out... I'm just lazy.

I see what you mean. Do you see noise or aberrations in mine? You posted this while I was typing my last response (hope you saw it.)

geospatial_junkie

Jack,

I see some darker fringing around the rings of some of the craters, but nothing I would lose sleep over. Can you post a different an XL-3 larger version of your unfixed moon shot (without the crop). I'll try some things (if you don't mind) and let you know what I did .

The curves may have improved the detail in yours, however, it is at the cost of noise. You also need to take into account that you were using a 300mm lens as opposed mine (over 1000mm with the 2x converter on it and the crop factor). This is of course, subjective to the person viewing it. It is sometimes hard to find a happy balance. What ISO did you shoot at, as well as exposure info?

Thanks for the compliment, I appreciate you taking the time to look at my site.

Jack'll do

geospatial_junkie wrote:

Jack,

I see some darker fringing around the rings of some of the craters, but nothing I would lose sleep over. Can you post a different an XL-3 larger version of your unfixed moon shot (without the crop). I'll try some things (if you don't mind) and let you know what I did .

The curves may have improved the detail in yours, however, it is at the cost of noise. You also need to take into account that you were using a 300mm lens as opposed mine (over 1000mm with the 2x converter on it and the crop factor). This is of course, subjective to the person viewing it. It is sometimes hard to find a happy balance. What ISO did you shoot at, as well as exposure info?

Thanks for the compliment, I appreciate you taking the time to look at my site.

Here is the XL-3 uncropped original. I appreciate all the help I can get so I certainly look forward to seeing any alternative PP you come up with. (That's how we improve). BTW the image was shot as follows. f/8 1/125 iso 100 on a very sturdy old Chicago tripod but my remote release didn't arrive till the next day!

geospatial_junkie

Hi Jack,

O.K... first thing is, you just don't have the megapixels to be able to blow the image up to the size you had. So, with that in mind thse are the only options I could come up with (even with these, there isn't many printing options):

Version 1:


Version 2:


In Version 1, I converted to LAB colorspace and applied a 50pnt unsharpen mask to the lightness channel (any more and I really start to get jagged lines appear). Then, I recoverted to RGB and applied a Defog filter ( I have Tiffen dfx). This is the equivalent of a slight decrease in gamma and offset in the exposure menu in PS. The crop is just personal preference.

In Version 2, at the end of all that jazz up above, I converted to black-and-white using the channel mixer and used a blue filter to bring out the craters. I assumed the moon is like rock... and I tend to use blue filters on rock a lot.:D

I hope this helps!

Jack'll do

geospatial_junkie wrote:

Hi Jack,

O.K... first thing is, you just don't have the megapixels to be able to blow the image up to the size you had. So, with that in mind thse are the only options I could come up with (even with these, there isn't many printing options):

Version 1:


Version 2:


In Version 1, I converted to LAB colorspace and applied a 50pnt unsharpen mask to the lightness channel (any more and I really start to get jagged lines appear). Then, I recoverted to RGB and applied a Defog filter ( I have Tiffen dfx). This is the equivalent of a slight decrease in gamma and offset in the exposure menu in PS. The crop is just personal preference.

In Version 2, at the end of all that jazz up above, I converted to black-and-white using the channel mixer and used a blue filter to bring out the craters. I assumed the moon is like rock... and I tend to use blue filters on rock a lot.:D

I hope this helps!

That's a function of smugmug I guess. The original is 3872x2592 px. @300ppi The image I posted in my original post was an 800x600 crop at 300ppi of the original .I didn't blow it up at all, just a simple crop. I'd really like to see what you can do with the original in PP then crop as I did and post it.If you PM me your email I'll email the original to you if that will help. (If you'd rather not give out your email I understand.)
Your version 1 is nice but I'd like to see more detail in the image for the web. I understand the problems that would impose on the printed version.

Jack'll do

Here's another try. PP was
->lab color
usm 50%, r=1.8, thr=1
->RGB
slight curve adjustment (lighten the larger white circles, darker the darker brown area both just a little)
brightnes -21
contr +23
Still not happy with the lack of detail.

geospatial_junkie

Much better Jack!!

I know your still not happy with the detail, but I'm not sure if there is much more that can be done. I'll have to check out the original file this weekend and have a go and get back to you.

Jack'll do

geospatial_junkie wrote:

Much better Jack!!

I know your still not happy with the detail, but I'm not sure if there is much more that can be done. I'll have to check out the original file this weekend and have a go and get back to you.

Thanks Will. I've enjoyed our discourse.