Almost a full moon

[Dfg]

[ajohnw]

You will probably get more posts on shooting the moon. A lot depends on what you want. I'm interested in astronomy so tend to go that way. This shot was taken when there was some cloud about and there had been rain but no where near as recently as I would ideally like. That tends to clear the air but there is still likely to be some mistyness. The first thing to do is to get the exposure right. I did that manually. Slightly dark is probably the best bet to that the rays etc can be bought up via processing. I took several shots with the AF point in different places as the moon sometimes isn't an easy thing to focus on. The camera used contrast type focusing which doesn't help. I kept refocusing the camera until it looked sharp - 1/2 shutter presses but still took several. It was taken hand held. I knew that the camera would cope with a subject like this easily at 500 ISO so had set that. Given that the sky was a bit misty I feel the results aren't to bad following some post processing. I don't think there is really any way of getting round that under the usual atmospheric conditions. I worked on a full resolution crop. From a camera jpg. I often do that if the jpg has the info the shot needs.



The PP from the exif was

Fotoxx:trim|trim|bright-range|bright-color|tonemap|sharpen|

Translating that to more usual terms. Trim=crop, brightness range=is a form of contrast adjustment, bright-colour as used was curves, tone levels only, sharpen the usual unsharp mask. Tone mapping is a bit unusual in my case. This one mostly augmented only low contrast features and did nothing to high contrast. The bright rim to the right is in raw as well but the sharpening will have strengthened that, I suspect I could do better these days.

The crater detail comes out best towards the shadowy side of the moon. That's normal and down to the angle of illumination from the sun light.

It was shot in November. In the UK and elsewhere probably the skies are only ever near really clear in the winter months. This makes the use of astro telescopes a rather cooling experience otherwise I might have set my camera up on one and taken the shot with that. I suspect the difference would surprise many people.

John
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[Wavelength]

Great image