Waxing Gibbous Moon @ 1000mm

Don Kondra

Greetings,

Still getting a handle on the Bigma, I've read it doesn't do well with the x2 teleconverter so that's what I'm using to shoot the moon :barb

Slik tripod, Jobu Jr 2 gimgal, wireless shutter release.

Shutter priority 1/160, + 1 EV, iso 100, f 12.6 (wide open), 2 second mirror lockup.

The only changes to the raw file I made in Studio is a small crop, noise filter to high and convert to jpeg.

Then in Elements 7 I made some lighting, brightness and contrast adjustments, ran it through Noiseware and a +1 sharpening in FastStone Image Viewer.



Cheers, Don

time2smile

Looks pretty good for not being able to be done....

kdog

Did you compare shots with and without the TC? I'm betting this would look better without it.

Regards,
-joel

Don Kondra

I had to walk 300' in the dark to find a spot to shoot through the trees so the plan was to shoot without the ec 20 the next evening.

Which was cloudy

I have no doubt a cropped shot without the teleconverter will have more detail.

FYI, a member on the 4/3 forum offered to try his hand at PP'ing this image.

This was his result....



Cheers, Don

kdog

Don Kondra wrote:

FYI, a member on the 4/3 forum offered to try his hand at PP'ing this image.

This was his result....

He made it worse. Look at almost any of your craters compared to his. There are more details in yours. For example, there is a single larger crater exactly half-way up the left edge of your moon. Compare that crater to the one in his shot. On yours you can see into the crater, and even a raised little area in the center. On his, you see a blown out rim on the left, and blocked-out shadow on the right with nothing in the center. The high contrast looks more vibrant in his, but the moon doesn't actually look like that and he's ruined the detail. I took your shot and sharpened slightly, and it looks even better.

When you get a good moon shoot, they take very little processing.

Here's a link to one of mine in a very similar phase. I stacked two TC1.4x extenders on a 400mm lens for this (780mm total).
http://www.jacara.com/cpg144/albums/misc/IMG_8957.jpg

Cheers,
-joel

Don Kondra

Hi Joel,

I do feel the rework was a little sharp and bright in spots but I did receive some very good pointers on processing And it's not nice to criticize the cook, he, he..

Your shot is Quite Nice, perhaps a tad bright on my monitor but Great detail. I wonder if the use of two shorter teleconverters is what made the difference or simply a better lens?

Also Kuso on your shot says f 5.6 ??? The bigma + ec20 wide open is f 12.6.. and my shot at 1/160 is at least two stops underexposed.

Here's hoping for clear skies tonight...

Cheers, Don

kdog

Yeah, the pins on one of my TCs were probably taped so it was non-reporting (that's a Canon hack to AF at greater than F5.6). Actual F-stop with 2 TCs would have been more like F11. The shot is bright. But it's not blown out anywhere, so I'm happy with it. A TC2 *should* be better than stacked TC1.4's. Lens was the Canon 400 F5.6 which is a good lens. Shot manual focus using LiveView, which works much better for me than through the viewfinder. LiveView also puts the camera in mirror-lock mode. That's important at these shutterspeeds, as is a good tripod of course.

Cheers,
-joel

Don Kondra

For comparison, this is a shot last night with just the Bigma.

Conditions were not ideal but after a couple nights of rain and clouds I'll take what I can get

Cropped of course and just basic processing.



The Bigma alone does stand up to the cropping necessary to arrive at an image the same size as with the TC2.

Two things I need to do, work on my processing and definitely move to focusing with live view.

Cheers, Don

ront

I hope that I am not totally out of line here!!!! I will remove this post if I am.

I would think that the Bigma could produce a better photo than this. I took this photo of the moon a few nights ago with my Sony A700 and Tamron 7-300mm (cheap lens) at 300mm.
Don, I am not attempting to slam your photo at all!! I just think that it could be better, but not sure if it is equipment or processing.

Ron

Don Kondra

No problem Ron,

The images I've posted are meant to be works in progress and do not represent what the Bigma is capable of, I should have been more clear on this point.

I did mention I need to work on my processing, the files from the Bigma are quite a bit different than files from the Zuiko Digital lenses.

Hopefully some will find this exercise more useful than just posting a final product.

Cheers, Don

ront

Thanks Don. WOW that photo in the link posted by kdog is awesome. There is no way I can get that with my set up. If you can do that, that would be just great!!

Ron