Day and Night Moon shots

[FlyingSquirrel]

Well friends, I'm back to post after a while away. I've missed the community here, but been quite busy. Anyway, here is my contribution to the image sharing...

Two images of the moon from the same day. One shot in late evening, the other an hour later. Gear and technique:

Canon 7D
Canon 500mm f4 IS II
Canon 1.4x extender
Sturdy tripod and gimbal head
Wireless shutter release

Used ISO 100, the lowest on my camera, to minimize image noise. Used f/5.6, the widest aperture available with the extender on the lens. When shooting moon shots, there is no need to stop the lens down because your depth of field at the distance of the moon is essentially infinity. Some say to stop down for sharper shots, but my lens is sharp wide open. Wide open will give you the fastest shutter speed with the lowest ISO. I used Manual mode so I can choose and lock in my aperture, shutter speed, etc.

Technique. Turned the lens IS off and switched to Manual focus. Spotted the Moon through the viewfinder, then moved the aim a little ahead of the movement of the moon to account for the speed at which it moves through the viewfinder at such a high magnification. Locked the gimbal down securely. Next, turned on live view and zoomed into the maximum zoom there. Manually focused on the moon, carefully. The image shakes severely with high magnification in live view and through 700mm on a 1.6 crop sensor, so lightly turn the focusing ring, let go, check the lcd, lightly adjust a little more, etc, until satisfied with my focus manually, I let go of the rig and waited 5 seconds for the vibrations to subside. Then release the shutter with a wireless remote. Live view additionally has the benefit of inherently having the mirror locked up which reduces vibrations.

I did a couple test shots and checked the histogram for exposure. Exposed to the right as much as possible without blowing any highlights. This reduces image noise on the surface of the moon because you are increasing the signal to noise ratio. Not everyone believes in the expose to the right method, but it clearly works, both in numbers and in practice, so I'm not sure why they would think it is not a legitimate technique. I continued to take a number of shots, refocusing each time just in case.

Taking the image into Lightroom, I adjusted the exposure down a bit and brought the highlight slider down a bit to compensate for the exposure to the right. I brought the sharpening in LR down to 15 to reduce noise but still offer a little contrast for later processing. Moving to Photoshop, on the night image, I selected the moon and added a black background around it to remove any noise, halos, and cloud interference. No noise reduction was done on the moon because the noise was minimal and I didn't want to lose any details. Next, adjusted the contrast and black and white points with curves. Then added a tad of LCE. Cropped, downsized to show the most moon in frame, then created an edge mask and sharpened the image. On the image with the blue bg, I selected the moon, inverted the selection, ran noise reduction plugin on the bg. Then proceeded with the other steps as in the night image.

Best viewed at full size by hitting 'f' for each image in the popup viewer. Hope you enjoy the images, and I sincerely hope that my detailed instructions will assist someone in creating their own moon images. In the future I'd like to get a 2x extender for even closer moon shots, and small wildlife photography (manual focus only with the 2x because I don't have a pro body camera that would be needed to AF at f8).

[Stagecoach]

Very impressive Matt, great exposure and detail and thanks for the explanation.

Grahame

[deetheturk]

Great images Matt,i have still to achieve a moon shot of this quality,well done!

David

[IzzieK]

Thank you for the detailed explanation...Both are good shots...and good PP too.

[Shadowman]

Very nice.

[gregj1763]

Love the images Matt and thanks for the detailed shooting technique.
I have a Sigma 2x extender to use with my Sony A65 and Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 and I haven't tried moon shots with it as yet.
So you have inspired me
Better get out there then I suppose.
Cheers, Greg

ps, Just went outside. No moon

[bnnrcn]

Nice images,thanks for sharing,thanks for the explanation as well