Big Moon, Wide Lens

Posted On By Rob

Tonight we are able to observe Earth’s moon at the closest orbit for the year.  This happily coincides with Venus traversing the sun early in the morning (Sunday 6th of May).  The moon will be full around 1pm (13:35) today and rising at 5:15pm (17:15).

Here are some wide and telephoto images I captured from right outside my house on a chilly Sunday morning of the waxing gibbous moon (98% full moon).

P5067648
Exposure: 1 second
Focal Length: 11mm
ISO: 400
F-stop: f/2.8

A beautiful shot from my Olympus 11-22mm ultra wide angle lens.  To capture the detail, I shot this at ISO-400 and an f-stop of f/2.8 at 11mm for 1 second with a focal length of 11mm.

P5067658P5067647
Exposure: 4 seconds                                 Exposure: 1/60 second
Focal Length: 104mm                                Focal Length: 200mm
ISO: 100                                                  ISO: 800
F-stop: f/8                                                F-stop: f/3.5

Next, a zoom shot at 104mm (above, left) and at 200mm (above, right) with an f-stop of f/8 (above, left) and an f-stop of f/3.5 (above, right) and an exposure of 4 seconds (above, left) and at 1/60 sec (above, right).  Obviously I didn’t have a realistic chance of getting a clear focus because of the cloud cover, but you do get to view the perfect symmetry of the moon, and the misty clouds don’t look half bad.

P5067651
Exposure: 4 seconds
Focal Length: 11mm
ISO: 100
F-stop: f/2.8

Reverting back to the 11-22mm lens, another shot this time with a 4 second exposure, ISO-100 and the same f-stop (f/2.8) and focal length (11mm).  The clouds seem a bit puffier and there appears to be a slight difference in sharpness.  I just threw this one in for comparison purposes.

Here are two examples of using High Dynamic Range (HDR), post-processing tone mapping from the RAW format:

P5067648_tonemapped P5067660_tonemapped

The first shot is using the default details enhancer, the second using a monochrome filter.

I like how the left hand photo above (which is a tone mapped version of the first photo) almost looks liek it is set against blue sky – in the middle of the night!

Here are some  photos of the full moon, taken earlier today (Monday 7/05/2012):

P5067665 P5077696a

Exposure: 4 seconds                                Exposure: 1/1000 sec
Focal Length: 11mm                                 Focal Length: 200mm
ISO: 200                                                 ISO: 320
F-stop: f/2.8                                            F-stop: f/3.5

Under a wave of high sirrus or alto looking cloud, the moon shone through.  Once the majority of the cloud had (briefly) passed, I was able to shoot the moon itself using a 50-200mm f/2.8-f/3.5 telephoto lens.

Earlier that evening, I’d been playing around with the moon in concert with the moonlight’s lens flare, to create some fairly dramatic composition.

P5067685P5067669

Exposure: 2 seconds                               Exposure: 1 sec
Focal Length: 54mm                                Focal Length: 200mm
ISO: 200                                                ISO: 100
F-stop: f/5                                              F-stop: f/5.6

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