The Moon this evening

I took my first photo of the moon tonight, and it is nowhere near the quality of yours but I discovered earthshine, something I did not know about.

May I ask what you used to take this photo, and the settings if you know such as shutter speed? I only have a kit lens so had to crop the RAW file in NX-D as I could not get in far, and I used a bollard as a makeshift tripod.
 
Thanks for the likes, all.

conanthewarrior said:
I took my first photo of the moon tonight, and it is nowhere near the quality of yours but I discovered earthshine, something I did not know about.

May I ask what you used to take this photo, and the settings if you know such as shutter speed? I only have a kit lens so had to crop the RAW file in NX-D as I could not get in far, and I used a bollard as a makeshift tripod.
Click to expand...

The details of the shot were - Pentax K5, 55-300mm zoom at 300mm, f6.3, 1/500s, ISO 1600 and a lot of cropping. My makeshift tripod was the edge of roof of our shed.

The original file was 4928x3264 pixels. The posted image is 1046 x 1046.

Dave

PS A couple of good sites for info on all things astronomical are In-the-Sky ( https://in-the-sky.org/ ) and the free, downloadable program Stellarium( https://stellarium.org/ ). Both can be set to your latitude and longitude.
 
@Tringa , thank you for the details.

I am amazed you used a makeshift tripod too! I feel I have got to grips with my camera now for everyday images. I do wish to get a zoom lens for my Nikon D3500 as I only have the kit lens at the moment.

I see you mention you had to crop the image, this was to enlarge the moon yes? It still has a lot of detail on my monitor, so if I went for something like a Nikkor 70-300MM lens I could get shots like this in the right conditions?

If so, I would be very happy :).
 
conanthewarrior said:
@Tringa , thank you for the details.

I am amazed you used a makeshift tripod too! I feel I have got to grips with my camera now for everyday images. I do wish to get a zoom lens for my Nikon D3500 as I only have the kit lens at the moment.

I see you mention you had to crop the image, this was to enlarge the moon yes? It still has a lot of detail on my monitor, so if I went for something like a Nikkor 70-300MM lens I could get shots like this in the right conditions?

If so, I would be very happy :).
Click to expand...


Yes, I cropped the shot to get a larger image of the moon. This is the uncropped shot (the only change is it is resized for the forum)



As this shows 300mm is nowhere near long enough to get a decently sized image without cropping. The really good moon shots on here are from folks with much longer lenses and/or teleconverters or from those who have 'proper' astro gear, where the costs can make what some of the rest of us spend on cameras look like chicken feed.

There is no reason anyone with a similar set up could not get similar (or hopefully better) results. I find it very hit and miss. The shot I post was the only one out of about 20 that was half way decent and I'm aware that is as far as I think I will be able to go with my current set up.

Although a kit lens is going to struggle to get a reasonably sized image of the Moon, it will, with a tripod, give decent shots of the stars.

Dave
 
conanthewarrior said:
I am amazed you used a makeshift tripod too!
Click to expand...
Me too. It's a bright sunlit object. The shutter speed was 1/500th of a second with a 300mm lens. Why do you need a tripod?
 
Nice clear image of the moon.

StewartR said:
Me too. It's a bright sunlit object. The shutter speed was 1/500th of a second with a 300mm lens. Why do you need a tripod?
Click to expand...
I was wondering about that myself.
 
StewartR said:
Me too. It's a bright sunlit object. The shutter speed was 1/500th of a second with a 300mm lens. Why do you need a tripod?
Click to expand...

I wondered why you was asking that until I looked at the shutter speed again. I am pretty slow to catch on sometimes, it was in response to my awful attempt where I used one ;)
 
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Tringa said:
Hands are not as steady as they used to be so I use anything that can help.

Dave
Click to expand...
I know how you feel Dave, I shake worse than a morris minor on a cobbled street.
 
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