Clouds Across the Moon

I took my camera to work with me yesterday hoping to get some time. Anyhow..some 14 hours later when I was on my way home ( the job went badly! ) I stopped in a layby to eat and decided to make do with what I had...dark skies and bright moon.
Then, as I got my tripod set up the clouds came over ( yes...I was having a bad day).
I took a few shots and quite like the effect of the first one.

C&C as always.
[IMG]http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i296/Father_Ted/PHOTOS/cloudsacrossthemoonupload.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i296/Father_Ted/PHOTOS/cloudsacrossthemoon2.jpg[/IMG]

Padre,

Whilst I agree that the colour/shape of the sky is attractive in number one, I think that there is rather too much nothing in the picture.

In your shoes, I would try a number of different (and perhaps fairly drastic) crops and try to see if you can isolate the colourful bits and make something useful out of them.

G

I'd probably go a bit further than George regarding the first one. Each to his own, of course, and if you like it, you like it. But as George says, there's hardly anything to see, and the five second exposure has blurred even that. To be perfectly honest, I think time spent attempting to salvage something from this one is time better spent taking more pictures.

As for the moon, the exposure is good, and the cloud makes it a bit unusual.

The trouble with having only 6 megapixels and only 300mm is that there's really a limit on how big it's worth attempting to display a 100% crop like this. I think it's better to display them smaller when they're like this, so that the detail appears sharper. Try reducing it to 400px instead of 800 and see if you agree that although smaller, it looks better.

It was the blur and the colours which I liked, more like a watercolour ( or so I thought).

I do agree about the second one. To be honest, I only increased to 800 for the forum.

It has certainly given me the incentive to dig my telescope out again, then my measly 300mm will become 1000mm

Father Ted

Try to keep the iso at 100 for the moon. You might just about get away with the 300mm, not sure about the limitations of the 6MP but if you do not crop it heavily you should be ok I think.

Exposure time at 1/180 and aperture somewhat between f/8 and f/11.
I would prioritise the aperture and ss and then start at 100 iso, if dark then go up and hopefully you can nail it at 200 iso, but if push comes to shove go up with the iso.

I am sure you can nail it. Do try Spot metering also.

But these are just my personal opinion based on the few moon shots I attempted in the past few months.

EDIT: and do not forget to use mirror lock up or the 2sec timer so you do not get any camera shake.

The trouble with not cropping is that even at 400mm, let alone 300mm, the whole frame looks like this:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP2370-sm.jpg[/IMG]

There's simply no way of displaying the detail in the moon in only 800 pixels here, without cropping a portion of the frame. And once you crop, you end up having to show all the pixels in that crop (the more so, the shorter the focal length, since then the smaller the moon is in the frame).

This pushes you right up against the limitation of the lens, and the distance between the pixels. The lower the resolution of the sensor, the less good the result will be.

Exposure doesn't have to be as short as 1/180. You don't get appreciable motion blur (ie, blur > 1 pixel) until you're slower than (very) roughly 1/20s, dependent on focal length and sensor resolution.

Spot metering to get a reading, fair enough. Then switch to manual.

The moon moves so fast that unless you're really quick, you won't be metering on the moon any more when you come to take the picture.

Personally, I find that trial and error, and then manual once you've found a good exposure, is much more reliable than any of the auto-exposure modes.

Definitely.

Points taken Chris
I will go back to the drawing board again and improve my few attempts at the moon shot.

Regarding cropping, I didn't imply that Father Ted didn't crop at all, I advised him not to crop "heavily". His image seems like he could have eased a little on the chopping board.

Having said all this I also concluded the comment saying that these were just my personal inexperienced views and I still have a lot to learn .

Thanks for the tips, will try to implement them

Yeah...and I'm the queen of Sheba!!

now you made me giggle in a nice way I mean, honestly I didn't intend to sound sarcastic. Truth is I still have a long way to go and I will take knowledge from any source here. Many of the members here carry almost an encyclopaedic knowledge in the field and I am always keen in learning it given the oportunity.