Robert Velasco

Good morning everyone. This shot of the moon was taken using my itsy-bitsy Canon G3x. I am not quite sure how this picture came to be from a scientific point of view. Maybe someone in this group has an explanation. My question is this. Why is the sky black when this picture was taken in broad daylight with a very bright and light blue sky? I noticed as I was zooming in on the moon that the sky became darker and darker until I reached the limits of my zoom, 1200mm, at which point the sky appeared black. The position of the moon was almost exactly overhead so much so that I had difficulty in pointing the camera straight up as I feared falling backwards. Lastly, and this has nothing to do with the colors of the sky, I shot this picture hand held. Frankly, I was too lazy to dig out my big and heavy tripod and I couldn't find the camera attachment anyway so I simply leaned against the fence and held the camera as still as I could.

toxdoc42

Amazing shot, particularly hand held! Wild, was your camera set to auto exposure? The moon may have been.so.bright that auto exposure made the rest dark.

Daryl New Loc: Wellington,New Zealand

Great shooting,we still haven't shot it to our satisfaction.

Robert Velasco

Hello, and thanks for your reply. I programmed the camera to take pictures of hawks and I saved the settings. The shutter speed is 1/500, aperture is f/5.6 and the ISO is set to automatic with a range of 200 to 800. I use these settings because I like the depth of field of the lens at that f stop and also because it seems to be the lens sweet spot. The lens only goes to f/11 but I don't think there is much improvement beyond the f5/6 setting. So, in answer to your question, the ISO is the only variable that moves to set the exposure correctly. Typically, I set the shutter at 1/1200 but for this shot I dialed it down because I actually thought the blueness of the sky and the faintness of the moon would not be rendered well at the higher speed. I did shoot it at the higher speed and the moon was darker making me think that I would have to increase the lightness levels in post processing so I simply slowed the shutter a bit. I liked this shot better.

Robert Velasco

I should mention that there is one additional setting I am using with this little camera, the Canon G3x. The range of the lens is 24 to 600 mm. I get it to 1200mm using the digital teleconverter built into the camera. It has two settings, 1.6 and 2.0. I was wary of this digital teleconverter issue because in my past experience with these devices, I always found that I had to make lots of concessions to get what I wanted out of them. Loss of f stops, and other issues. With this camera I have not noticed any of those issues. The picture sizes seem to be the same with or without the teleconverter usage, the shutter speeds seem to remain the same and the f stops do not require any adjustment either. It just seems that the lens is more powerful without any image loss of any kind. What has surprised me however, is that none of the reviewers of this camera mention the use of the teleconverter settings. Seems to me like a gold mine that has not been tapped.

Dr.Nikon Loc: Honolulu Hawaii

Without a download post .., I can only go,on what I see .., and it ain’t bad ..