Texas Supermoon

[xpatUSA]

Although this my best image of the moon ever, it was a big struggle involving many shots.

Main problems were:

Sigma 70-300mm lens with quite a loose barrel, no extension rings.

Sigma SD1 AF was not at it's finest so I used manual focus bracketing.

No extension rings or converter, so final crop was less than 700px square.

The Giottos 'Silk Road' tripod had the column extended all the way up (duh, I should have sat down).

At 300mm, the lens seems a bit soft.

Workflow.

The SD1 was set up for IR shooting, so I used the Foveon "blue" top layer.

I used the 'mirror-up' function which, on the Merrill has a timer option.

Exported from Sigma Photo Pro as a monochrome 16-bit TIFF.

Labored in RawTherapee to get a decent contrast and sharpness.

Ran it through Piccure+ for even more acutance.

Here we are, for what it's worth, C&C welcome:

[Wavelength]

Well done; i can see those craters

[xpatUSA]

Well done; i can see those craters

Thank you, kind sir!

[mknittle]

Looks really good to me, Ted

[bnnrcn]

It looks great Ted !

[madcrow]

Clarity and sharpness fantastic.

[dje]

Excellent clarity Ted. Nice work.
Dave

[xpatUSA]

Thanks All,

Just for interest, here's the [George, please fill in the blank] image extracted from the Foveon top layer data:



That's what the sensor saw before any processing at all!

[dem]

Nice shot and processing. Supermoon AND Texas? The Moon does not get bigger than that

[joebranko]

Great shot and processing! Amazing detail.!

[Shadowman]

Ted,

Did you try a few captures at 250, 270, 280mm to see if helped overcome the softness?

[xpatUSA]

Ted,

Did you try a few captures at 250, 270, 280mm to see if helped overcome the softness?

Good point, John.

The moon was already quite small in the frame (less than 700px diameter on my 15MP Foveon sensor) and I just set the lens to the max without thinking. :-(

. . I guess I'll miss the next 'supermoon' . .