The skies were clear, the moon was bright, so I had to try taking a picture. Handheld. That’s my excuse, anyway.
I can see craters!
Next time, tripod.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The skies were clear, the moon was bright, so I had to try taking a picture. Handheld. That’s my excuse, anyway.
I can see craters!
Next time, tripod.
Remember, the moon is a sun-lit object. Do not trust your meter!
When I shot with film, I shot the full moon at around 1/500th second at f8 or f11.
1/250, f8 in this case, and it is a bit blown out.
I don’t know what this looks like on your viewing device, but adjusting the gamma reveals a lot more on mine.
You can see craters with your naked eyes though.
I’d go either with f11 or better, a neutral filter and definately, a tripod. I’ll give you, you’ve held it steadier than I’ve frequently managed!
I’ve got a fine sequence of a total lunar eclipse, both hand held and quality tripod stabilized pictures from my aged Canon S5IS camera. Love the manual focus mode, for the shots that autofocus would be tricky with!
Concur with #3 – gamma tweak shows plenty more detail on the terminator and maria, although the bright highlands are overexposed and contain little or no info. Your hands must be quite steady: that is quite a crisp shot!
Makes me think of “Zoom and Enhance” in bad TV shows and Movies for some reason.
There is a a amateur astronomer inside everyone.
@4: “You can see craters with your naked eyes though”
Maybe you can but I definitely can’t. Before the invention of the telescope nobody noticed any of the impact features we now call “craters”. What human eyes can see are the large dark areas called “seas” because that’s what people saw them as before telescopes.
Some of us can also see bright ejecta called “rays” which lead the eye to a dark spot in the middle, the main crater. No one called them out for what they are before telescopes came on the scene, and our ancestors eyes were as good as ours.
The “seas” are impact features but so large no one calls them craters even though both types of impact feature have the same origin.
So it all depends on what you mean by “crater” and what you mean by “see”.
If you get even a small telescope the Lunar features will be far more amazing and beautiful than in any photograph.
PZ: Amazing detail. Suggestion, if you can set the camera down, rock car, wall, etc, use the timer to avoid hand shaking.
jack16
F/number depends on the camera sensor size too, the smaller the system, the lower down the f-stop range diffraction will show, so for instance I use my Sony RX10 III which has a 1-inch sensor and a 220mm lens (600mm full frame equivalent), and f4 yields a perfectly sharp picture, and f5.6 already shows some softness, only getting worse from there. Luckily like #1 above said the moon is just fine being shot with daytime exposure settings, so many small-sensor cameras, which are easier and cheaper to get with long lenses, are usually perfectly fine for a handheld moon shot, especially since so many of them have optical image stabilization nowadays.
Also, the craters are more striking when the light is not falling straight (i.e. not full moon). I took this pic with the moon in the background and I have to admit the craters showing like that was just accidental, I was aiming for the object in the foreground :)
I probably should have said “incidental”, not accidental.
Was that shot with a P900? Flat Earthers won’t accept any photo that wasn’t taken with a P900.