For us deep-sky images I’m afraid the Moon is simply a nuisance, especially as it approaches full. Well tonight I wanted to do some imaging – so there’s only one choice really, and that’s the Moon. This image was taken with the Canon 40D and the 100-400 mm zoom lens with a x1.4 teleconverter giving me an overall 560 mm focal length.
There was a bit more to it than just pointing and clicking as you might imagine. Despite it’s brightness, the Moon is surprisingly difficult to photograph well. So I threw everything I had into this image. First off I shot at ISO 100 and used camera RAW. I then chose 3 different exposure times from underexposed to overexposed and HDR combined them. Crop, some curves, some Noel Carboni contrast enhancement, and finally some CS3 smart sharpening gave this final result. Not the best I’ve ever seen, but reasonable for a quick experiment.
That’s amazing – if I hadn’t seen the equipment you’ve got I would never have imagined you could take that from your back yard. I think these near space images are just as amazing as the deep sky images. Greg & Noel, once again, brilliant work .
Thank you Dave – glad you like it. Probably best to sit down at this point, but I actually processed that one all on my own (but using Noel’s Photoshop actions of course). 🙂
Greg