Beginner's question - Using Sigma 600mm to take moon pictures (Page 3): Setting a lens like this manually to infinity can be 'interesting'. Quite a number of manual focus long...

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Bobspez wrote:

I don't know if it was mentioned, but not only a s... (show quote)

Setting a lens like this manually to infinity can be 'interesting'. Quite a number of manual focus long telephoto lenses focused beyond infinity to allow for the effect of temperature changes of the lens. I have found that I need to focus visually for distant subjects using magnified live view.

The OP has a mirror lens, which I assume is manual focus, and that will be a fine adjustment with the field of view of a 900mm equivalent lens, especially with a fixed aperture.

Not sure if that is what you meant, but I have found using a crop camera with a manual focus reflex lens to be quite challenging for subjects like moonshots.

Interested in your comments, thanks.

Cheers

axiesdad Loc: Monticello, Indiana

I use a wireless remote shutter release for this sort of shooting; that and mirror lock or live view will eliminate almost all vibration even if your tripod isn't the greatest. Also, many lenses can't just be "set" to infinity. The limit of focus is beyond infinity (no Buzz Lightyear cracks) so auto focus doesn't bang into the hard stops. Going to live view and then zooming in before the final focus adjustment seems to work best.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I think you are correct Peterff and others who mentioned auto lenses focusing beyond infinity in manual mode. Most of my lenses are manual film lenses so maybe they don't have that characteristic? I also like the idea of using the lcd magnifier. That works very well on any lens on my Nikon D3100, showing up to 6x magnification on the lcd screen during live view preview.
I'm recuperating from surgery right now with no lifting for a few weeks, but I am looking forward to using my Nikkor AFS 55-300 lens with my used Nikon 1 J1, now that I bought the Nikon FT1 adapter for f-mount lenses on the J1. That will give me an 810 mm field of view on the moon. Although the FT1 adapter lets me autofocus, it unfortunately disables the lcd magnifier during live view preview. I guess it will be trial and error looking at the captured images magnified on the lcd screen after they are taken.
Bob

Peterff wrote:

Setting a lens like this manually to infinity can ... (show quote)

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Bobspez wrote:

I think you are correct Peterff and others who men... (show quote)

Best wishes on recovery!

My comment about focusing beyond infinity was primarily focused on older manual focus lenses, but I think it applies to many long reach lenses, not because of auto focus but simple a big physical device can expand or contract in different temperatures and with big lenses that can alter the focus settings I believe.

I'm using an old Canon FD 500mm reflex lens with an Ed Mika custom adapter on an EOS body. When Canon went from manual focus to auto focus in 1987 they changed the flange to film plane distance by 2mm from 42mm to 44mm. The fact that many of the longer lenses focused beyond infinity also allowed for some wiggle room in designing replacement mounts that enabled (some of) the lenses to still achieve infinity focus without corrective lenses. Ed Mika has copious information about this on the web.

It is interesting stuff, to some at least.

Take care, and good luck.

inbigd

Thanks to everyone for all of the great information and comments. Attached is the best I could do a few weeks ago by leaning on the roof of my wife's car.

Also, could someone tell me which tripods are acceptable and are wireless triggers ok or is a wired one better?

Thanks!

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

inbigd wrote:

Thanks to everyone for all of the great information and comments. Attached is the best I could do a few weeks ago by leaning on the roof of my wife's car.
Also, could someone tell me which tripods are acceptable and are wireless triggers ok or is a wired one better?
Thanks!

Nice photo. I use a cable remote , it gives me a lot of parameters to work with. Simple release, timed release, number of shots and time between shots.
Craig

raysass Loc: Brooklin, On, Canada.

inbigd wrote:

Thanks to everyone for all of the great information and comments. Attached is the best I could do a few weeks ago by leaning on the roof of my wife's car.

Also, could someone tell me which tripods are acceptable and are wireless triggers ok or is a wired one better?

Thanks!

And you could crop it a bit more.
Ray.

Leitz Loc: Solms

[quote=Gitzo] "... plus mirror lenses, (unlike ordinary "refractive" lenses ), correct for NOTHING; (astigmatism, coma, barrel distortion, chromatic aberration, pin cussion, nothing )"

Due to the design, with a mirror lens there is no chromatic aberration to be compensated for.

"Focusing on anything that's app. 250,000 miles distant is easy! just set the lens on 'infinity'"

The mirror is quite sensitive to temperature changes, which is why they focus beyond infinity. Setting to infinity will usually guarantee an out-of-focus image.

Carlcatt Loc: E. Vermont, USA

My cheap Canon bridge SX 50 or 60. Sees only half a moon, @ 1200 mm / 1365 mm, no room to crop....

andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

This one taken with the Sigma 150-600 S @600mm on Canon 60D and tripod. f6.3, 1/250 sec, ISO 400.

(Download)

BooIsMyCat Loc: Somewhere

earl_house wrote:

I am using a Tamron 150-600mm on D7100. Auto focus will get close but not lock onto the moon. I have to manual focus. I have been trying f11 - f16, 125th to 500th with iso of 100 to 400. Setting white balance to sunny. I have not found the best exposure yet.

Try setting WB to Tungsten. It should more reasonably match the color you see with your eyes.

BooIsMyCat Loc: Somewhere

earl_house wrote:

I am using a Tamron 150-600mm on D7100. Auto focus will get close but not lock onto the moon. I have to manual focus. I have been trying f11 - f16, 125th to 500th with iso of 100 to 400. Setting white balance to sunny. I have not found the best exposure yet.

You should be able to magnify a portion of your image to a factor of 1x, 5x and/or 10x. Read your manual to find out how to do this then, magnify a edge of the moon... and manually focus to get the sharpest image you can... click away.

Also, search the internet for "Looney 11". Some good tips on camera settings. Nikon settings are not the same as for Canon settings but, remember, these settings are more for a starting point and you may have to experiment.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

A very good start. A tripod costing about $60 should work fine. Go on Amazon and look for the one with the best reviews around that price. As long as your camera and lens is less than 5 lbs., that should work fine.
If you have a post processing program like free Picassa or PhotoShop, try cropping your pic about 50% and processing your photo. I think most of the photos shown on UHH have some post processing to beef up the contrast and saturation a bit to bring up the details.
I have a wired trigger for my camera but just use the 10 second delay timer so I can take the pic hands free.

Bob

raysass wrote:

And you could crop it a bit more.
Ray.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

Bobspez wrote:

A tripod costing about $60 should work fine..... Bob

Interesting. That is almost the exact opposite of Gene51's advice and also to my own experience for shooting at the moon.

It has very little to do with weight capacity and a huge amount to do with vibration suppression. If that $60 tripod is made from wood, concrete or unobtanium then it could work, but I haven't seen too many on B&H or Amazon.

Can you add a little more clarity please?

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Hi Peterff,
I have found my tripod which I bought on Amazon for $42 about 3-1/2 years ago to be very satisfactory for shooting anything including the moon. It's no longer available but is pretty generic and other makes will have very similar features for about $60. Here's the link to my tripod. I even gave it a 5 star review as customer "Book Reader".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001W1CY0/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I also have a 5" refractor telescope that sits on a 40lb. $300 motorized telescope mount that is needed when shooting pics of the moon at 160x magnification, but I wouldn't use it for taking shots at 10x to 50x with a camera.

There's always someone advising buying the best, a $1200 tripod or a $4000 camera or an $8000 lens, but there's a tradeoff in price/quality that I'm not up for.

If there's a clear night here in NJ (pretty rare) with a moon out in the next week or so I'll use my $42 tripod and my ebay $38 500mm manual lens and my ebay $17 2xTC on my ebay $80 Nikon 1 J1 10MP camera (pictured below and giving a 35mm focal length of 2700mm) and see what I can come up with, and post it here.

Bob

Peterff wrote:

Interesting. That is almost the exact opposite of Gene51's advice and also to my own experience for shooting at the moon.

It has very little to do with weight capacity and a huge amount to do with vibration suppression. If that $60 tripod is made from wood, concrete or unobtanium then it could work, but I haven't seen too many on B&H or Amazon.

Can you add a little more clarity please?

:lol:

(Download)