[OT] Harvest Moon

[justDIY]

The moon was pretty good tonight, nice and full, but it's a tad hazy out, so the pic is somewhat fuzzy

Taken at 8x opti only zoom, 1/250 sec exposure, ISO 100 film speed, 7.4 f-stop

I tried mars as well, but when it's brought into focus, you just get a small red dot! (32x zoom, 1/60 sec exp, ISO 400, 7.4 fstop)

 

[shawmutt]

You got a much bigger red dot than I did with my 500 mm lens! I'm jealous, that's a great camera.

 

[reefrunner69]

Put it on a tripod and use an 8 sec exposure...although with the full moon, it isn't likely to give good results..

 

[alrmc4]

pretty darn awesome pic 8O

 

[justDIY]

You got a much bigger red dot than I did with my 500 mm lens

500mm optical? that is a nice lense!!

load some Kodak 400 Ectachrome (or the new color HD film) into your cam and fire away at mars, start with 1/30 and work down to 1/2 or 1 second at various f/stops ... I'm not sure anything past 1 sec will yield good results as mars and earth are both moving, and you will get blurring (or streaking) because of it.

for $7 here the photomat will scan 27 negatives onto a CD using a high-ress slide scanner. Then you can open up your mars pics in PaintShop and fix the levels and enlarge.

500mm optical lense and some high-deff film would smoke my cam as far as clarity goes ... especially if you used a photographic enlarger.

-----

The shot of mars was at 1120 mm (32x on my cam)

The shot of the moon was at 280mm (8x)

-----

What kevin said about a tri-pod is 100% true, no way around it!

Even with a tripod, use a selftimer or remote shutter release, so you have a few seconds for the cam and tri-pod to stop moving after you press the shutter button.

 

[shawmutt]

I'm going try again...my last attempt I used 800 film and every pic was overexposed after just 6-8 seconds. I don't think I got far enough away from the city lights, and it was hazy that night. I went to the Antietam battlefield for the pics, and it was pretty dark, but I guess it wasn't dark enough. The f/stop is at 4.6 and is not adjustable on that particular lens--its a big mirror lens telephoto.

 

[justDIY]

mars is VERY bright, it just doesn't appear so to our eye because it's so small

6 to 8 sec is too much exposure in my opinion ... maybe for shooting the milky-way or something dimmer.

as I found shooting the moon, increasing the exposure decreased the contrast, so I actually aimed at a slight underexposure to bring out that detail .... I think the same would hold true for Mars, and then rely on photographic or digital enlargement to bring out something that you can see.

I can't enlarge that mars pic anymore than it is however, even with 5mp, the resolution is but a fraction of what a good black and white film would have.

 

[reefrunner69]

Have you seen Aaron's Mars pics?? The nice ones were taken at 8sec exposure.

 

[justDIY]

the first shot with mars together with other stars is an awesome pic, however, the two that appear "huge" are that way because they are out of focus, hence the fuzzy 'halo', the dark ring and then the "core" ... could pass those off as pictures of an alien sun or something

with focus locked on infinity, I was unable to produce anything near the size of those last two aaron took, but with cam left to its own devices (AF), it produced similar results.

i'm not trying to personally 'nock' aaron's pics, just argueing the technical details - he did a great job capturing a rare event!