Moon rise

[Kenny]

SE London Moon rise compilation.


Canon EOS 450D DSLR with Sigma DC 18-200mm lens set at 200m. Saturday 7th March.

First shot is 10 seconds at f/11, ISO-1600 to get the foreground. 2nd and 3rd shots are 4 seconds at f/11, ISO-200 to avoid over-exposing the Moon.

Despite knowing in advance I wanted to do this sequence and pick the best shot, the original goal being to get one 'perfect' single shot, I made a few planning mistakes and was a bit rushed when I got to it:

• I left it too late to get the first shot which meant the Moon was already crowning, although the upside was I could see exactly where the Moon was going to rise and better frame the series of 11 shots taken.
• I used an intervalometer to take shots every 4 minutes plus manual remote shutter to take some extra shots between, but unfortunately didn't have enough good shots to combine into a layered compilation.
• I didn't plan the settings well enough so some shots were over-exposured (badly burnt out Moon). Actually, what was required was for me to adjust the settings for each shot while the intervalometer was counting down

I'm determined to get a Moon rise shot well exposed with foreground and the Moon not burnt out. These were the best two.


But I think post processing has overly affected the Moon in the second one.

Exposure, histogram and curve adjusted and layered in Photoshop CS2.

[Carole]

Some good shots there Kenny.

Carole

[MarkS]

They look good Kenny.  There's no obvious blurring of the moon at that scale but I bet if you crop the image the blurring becomes obvious.  200mm x 10sec well exceeds the "Rule of 600" and so does 200mm x 4sec.  You could shorten the exposure time by choosing f/8 and ISO 400.

Mark

[Kenny]

I agree which is why only the first shot is 10 seconds and the Moon wasn't supposed to be in that one. The other shots are 4 seconds but even that is too long. I chose f/11 so the foreground would be in focus but increasing the ISO would help.

And as we've discussed previously, rule of 600 isn't really an effective measure. It's too long. I'll add this to my list of defects and avoid zooming/cropping the image.