The moon at 500mm

[Bm7b5]

Bm7b5 (Rick)? Does your D300 use the title ' Exposure Delay' for your mirror lock up setting?
I have a D90 and its the only setting I can find that would relate to mirror lock up apart from mirror lock up for cleaning.
I have just purchased the Sigma 150-500mm lens, affectionately called my Sigzooka and I would like to have a try at photographing the Moon myself.
I have some half decent efforts using my 18-200VR lens on a tripod but not to your standards.
Very nice shot!

No, the Exposure Delay is the time after pressing the Shutter Release, that both the Mirror AND Curtain are raised, so any vibration from actually pressing the Shutter Release button may be minimized, the mirror slap will still cause enough vibration in the body to potentialy blur your shot {depebding on the quality of your head and legs.

Mirror Lockup will reduce the shutter actuation to two steps. 1st press of the shutter release button will raise the mirror and the 2nd will raise the curtain for exposure. The time between is up to you, to insure stability. It is assumed that you are using a remote shutter release, otherwise physically using the Shutter Release button will introduce enough vibration to offset the mirror up feature.

I don't know if the D90 supports mirror up, and if so how it is implemented. If it is, and if they used the same method as the D300, the Mirror Up mode is not in the menu, but is on the left side dial and is Labeled Mup. On the D300 it is the last position on the wheel.

Do you see it there ?

[Keith]

[QUOTE
I don't know if the D90 supports mirror up, and if so how it is implemented. If it is, and if they used the same method as the D300, the Mirror Up mode is not in the menu, but is on the left side dial and is Labeled Mup. On the D300 it is the last position on the wheel.

Do you see it there ?[/QUOTE]

No I do not have it on my D90, the top dials are a different setup to the D300 which err's more to a Pro camera than the D90, ah well!
Thanks for your reply.

Keith

[crisscross]

I don't know if the D90 supports mirror up, and if so how it is implemented. If it is, and if they used the same method as the D300, the Mirror Up mode is not in the menu, but is on the left side dial and is Labeled Mup. On the D300 it is the last position on the wheel.

Do you see it there ?

It is worth registering the camera and using the 'signed-in' mode on the Nikon site
http://nikoneurope-en.custhelp.com
You can then get quite fast (ie 24hrs) answers to questions. I think there is a chance that the D90 will have Mup if the D300 has and I would ask.

[Keith]

Thanks Chris but I have gone right through the manual with no sign.
The D90 keeps the preset programmes along with priority settings on a dial where I believe the D300 has a seperate dial for settings such as WB, ISO and of course MUP, where as the D90 has those options on seperate buttons, but I will try your suggestion as I am already registered with them.

[Keith]

It appears that Exposure Delay does operate the same as MUP, it has a set time of 1 sec from flipping the mirror up to opening the shutter, so will give this a go some time in the future, or when its Britains turn to get the moon in the right place at the right time

[crisscross]

It appears that Exposure Delay does operate the same as MUP, it has a set time of 1 sec from flipping the mirror up to opening the shutter, so will give this a go some time in the future, or when its Britains turn to get the moon in the right place at the right time

Looks promising from about end of next week
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html if you don't already know it

'Exposure delay' sounds as if it kills 2 birds with one stone....mmm wonder if that applies to my D80 as well, sounds like a double clunk; I always use it for indoor longish exposures on mini-tripod

Would account for why Nikon don't bother so much about M-up as a separate control apart from cleaning.

[Bm7b5]

Looks promising from about end of next week
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html if you don't already know it

'Exposure delay' sounds as if it kills 2 birds with one stone....mmm wonder if that applies to my D80 as well, sounds like a double clunk; I always use it for indoor longish exposures on mini-tripod

Would account for why Nikon don't bother so much about M-up as a separate control apart from cleaning.

The Mup on the D300 is not a programmed delay. 1st actuation raises the mirror, 2nd the curtain. So you can control the length of the delay between mirror slap and actual exposure to insure no vibration.

[crisscross]

The Mup on the D300 is not a programmed delay. 1st actuation raises the mirror, 2nd the curtain. So you can control the length of the delay between mirror slap and actual exposure to insure no vibration.

I was slightly surprised that there was no lock-up for delay or cable/remote shots on D90 (nor D80) whereas I am pretty sure there was on Canon 350D (much more basic box now passed to my son). Is more than 1 sec actually necessary for vibration to settle, or are there other uses for Mup?

[Matthew]

Wow! Thats lovely! I love the moon can't wait to get some shots in myself fantastic!

[crisscross]

The moon at 400mm

It looked good when I woke up at 3am last night, but my enthusiasm for setting up a tripod etc is not very high at that time of night. I was as careful as poss to use shutter speed 1/100. Also used focus magic to remove a bit of movement blur. Still not getting any where near as much 3D detail in the central area as Rick, but the edges seem pretty good and the moon is facing roughly the same way as his original post tho lit from other side. There was quite a lot of haze and a bit of fine cloud which appears near the top, but seems to me OK for a general collection and no doubt NASA has some perfectly good record pics

[Dave Humphries]

Nice shot Chris,

It occurs to me that I don't think anyone will ever get good detail from a single source image in the frontal lit bits, so I was wondering what a montage, or stack, of images would look like. I haven't explained that very well.

What I mean is take the lit right hand side of this one, the lit left hand side of Rick's, combine also with side-lit slices from a couple of others taken a little either side of 'half moon'.

This is something for someone who has an entire 'phase set' of images (at the same magnification) to try, for example by adding each image as separate layers and selectively revealing them in a final image. I don't, so that's my get out

Even then, it'll likely need levels, size and WB adjustments to get the slices all looking the same due to atmospheric effects.

Of course, it may look rubbish because the mind tells us 'this is impossible', but worth a try?
Any takers?

[crisscross]

It occurs to me that I don't think anyone will ever get good detail from a single source image.....
Of course, it may look rubbish because the mind tells us 'this is impossible', but worth a try?
Any takers?

I think my phrasing was wrong Dave, I should have said detail away from the penumbra where it is always best.

I think your project is more for an observatory than us lot!! We get what modelling we do from the sidelighting. To get your composite, I think it would have to be dozens of images stitched and also stretched onto something like a Mercator projection so it seemed possible that it was on a flat plane all sidelit from the same angle. I have no idea how long it takes for the moon to repeat an exact attitude to us, could be a lifetime and then there are the met conditions.

I find it rewarding to get this far and, as in most interests aroused by photography, find out a lot more about the subject....but never everything.

[JonathanC]

The best detail is always, as Dave has said, seen around the area where the moon goes from lit to unlit. so a partial moon will have more detail in the middle than a full moon. The edge of the shadow (the terminator) will move from day to day so you could theoretically do a full detailed moon image over one lunar month (full moon to full moon = 29.5 days). The moon does wobble a bit (libration) such that the side facing us changes over time, but quite slowly. This is analogous to the changing seasons on earth and is because the rotational axis is not aligned with the orbital axis.
On top of this, the moon is not in a circular orbit and so it gets very slightly bigger and smaller over one lunar orbit (27.3 days). As the orbital period and lunar month don't coincide, each full moon will be different in size to the last one, but only by a small amouunt.
If anybody isn't bored by this I'm amazed!