Having not used my camera for some time for astro I decided yesterday evening (14th) to have another go at a lunar time lapse from the back garden of my digs. So many mistakes made, I'm clearly out of practice but it's better to try than not.
- Canon 450D with Sigma DC 18-200mm at 18mm. With the benefit of hindsight, or a bit more planning, circa 33mm would have led to a much better result (and less cropping).
- 90 photos, 1 minute gap, at f/4.5, ISO100, 1/400th sec. 21:10 - 22:38. Only every 2nd photo was used in the end.
- I fell asleep.
- Woke up at 02:30. Packed up my very wet camera.
- Started reviewing the photos on my laptop after drying the camera. Then realised I'd forgotten to take a longer exposure shot to capture the foreground.
- Took my camera back outside, guessed at the position, took a series of sample foreground photos. Obviously in the intervening hours all the stars had moved considerably across the sky.
- Stacked in Startrails. Saw lots of hot pixels.
- Took some Darks. Failed to get Startrails to do anything useful with the Darks.
- Imported the RAW to Lightroom then opened as layers in Photoshop and blended, moved the foreground around then cropped.
- Final touches to the blended image back in Lightroom.
I offer this for your viewing pleasure but, given the comments above, it's not 'strictly' astronomically accurate. At best it's a composite that approximates what was visible over the period.
(https://c8.staticflickr.com/9/8075/29689903535_2423df6f7e_c.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/MeAvWx)
:D
Looks really good Kenny. Don't worry about adding the background in afterwards, you'd have had to have selected only one image and pasted the Moons on top anyway.
Carole
I really like it. And really good after an absence in using your camera etc. Thanks for sharing.