Stormy Moon: I came home from work at midnight the other day and saw this photo op in the sky. I really had to scramble to get these. I used several different lenses and even my star...

evandr Loc: Tooele, Utah

I came home from work at midnight the other day and saw this photo op in the sky. I really had to scramble to get these. I used several different lenses and even my star scope - what do you think?

Full Moon at midnight through thin storm clouds using a D700 camera attached to a 700MM Star Scope. ISO 1000 f/22 for 1/8 sec. Minor focus stacking in post production to bring out moon detail which accounts for the fact that the moon looks liked it is in the middle of a nebula cloud.

Full Moon at midnight through thin storm clouds using a D700 camera, a 17-35mm FX lense, ISO 800, f/8 and 1/350 sec shutter speed. No post production

Full Moon at midnight through thin storm clouds using a D700 camera, a 55-300mm DX lense, ISO 2000, f/16 and 1/250 sec shutter speed. No post production

leadstory

These are very nice. I saw similar moon in clouds formation where I live a few nights ago and I tried to photograph without much success. Good job!

evandr Loc: Tooele, Utah

leadstory wrote:

These are very nice. I saw similar moon in clouds formation where I live a few nights ago and I tried to photograph without much success. Good job!

Thanks, the key to getting the moon right is the shutter speed and using a long lens. You have to shoot in manual because the camera's meter will read the black and over expose the shot so ignore what the meter tells you.

The clouds were dense across the whole picture as you can see in the wide angle shot but notice that they quickly fade to black in the third shot; thats because the camera only picked up what was within the dynamic range of the camera and either blew out the highlights or the shadows went to black. That is why without some artistic efforts with focus stacking and/or bracketed shots in post production (bracketing can be hard to do because clouds are constantly moving) the moon always blows out to a white circle.

Because cameras render a picture in two dimensions having the moon nothing more than a white circle in a halo is not always undesirable such is evident in the case of the first shot where the moon, because it shows some detail, looks like the clouds surround it (it would have looked more normal with no detail on the moon itself). The eye/brain connection expects the moon, because it is so far away, to be blown out of focus to a soft white haze with no detail, it suggests the great distance between the moon and the clouds.

On the first shot, the one that looks like the clouds are surrounding the moon, I used a Mead Star scope with the camera attached to the back. Once I got the shutter speed and aperture correct (it took some trial and error, Okay, lots of it) I shot to capture the clouds and then refocused to capture the moon and then stacked the moon onto the clouds in post production. It is an interesting shot but puts the clouds near to the moon and not the earth where they should be.

The third shot looks somewhat normal even with the moon somewhat in focus becase of how quickly the clouds faded to black which kept the clouds nearer to the earth; that is why I did not crop all the black out but kept a large amount around the edges.

.

Here is another shot I took a few nights later of a harvest moon, there was some post production work done on the moon but "very little" in order to maintain a reasonable amount of suggested distance; in the actual scene the ring was much larger in relation to the moon and the moon was crystal clear. I also used a shorter lense (55mm wide angle) because the moon was not the primary subject matter, the ring and clouds were.

leadstory

Beautiful pics!

evandr wrote:

leadstory wrote:

These are very nice. I saw similar moon in clouds formation where I live a few nights ago and I tried to photograph without much success. Good job!

Thanks, the key to getting the moon right is the shutter speed and using a long lens. You have to shoot in manual because the camera's meter will read the black and over expose the shot so ignore what the meter tells you.

The clouds were dense across the whole picture as you can see in the wide angle shot but notice that they quickly fade to black in the third shot; thats because the camera only picked up what was within the dynamic range of the camera and either blew out the highlights or the shadows went to black. That is why without some artistic efforts with focus stacking and/or bracketed shots in post production (bracketing can be hard to do because clouds are constantly moving) the moon always blows out to a white circle.

Because cameras render a picture in two dimensions having the moon nothing more than a white circle in a halo is not always undesirable such is evident in the case of the first shot where the moon, because it shows some detail, looks like the clouds surround it (it would have looked more normal with no detail on the moon itself). The eye/brain connection expects the moon, because it is so far away, to be blown out of focus to a soft white haze with no detail, it suggests the great distance between the moon and the clouds.

On the first shot, the one that looks like the clouds are surrounding the moon, I used a Mead Star scope with the camera attached to the back. Once I got the shutter speed and aperture correct (it took some trial and error, Okay, lots of it) I shot to capture the clouds and then refocused to capture the moon and then stacked the moon onto the clouds in post production. It is an interesting shot but puts the clouds near to the moon and not the earth where they should be.

The third shot looks somewhat normal even with the moon somewhat in focus becase of how quickly the clouds faded to black which kept the clouds nearer to the earth; that is why I did not crop all the black out but kept a large amount around the edges.

.

quote=leadstory These are very nice. I saw simila... (show quote)

leadstory

Beautiful pics!

evandr wrote:

leadstory wrote:

These are very nice. I saw similar moon in clouds formation where I live a few nights ago and I tried to photograph without much success. Good job!

Thanks, the key to getting the moon right is the shutter speed and using a long lens. You have to shoot in manual because the camera's meter will read the black and over expose the shot so ignore what the meter tells you.

The clouds were dense across the whole picture as you can see in the wide angle shot but notice that they quickly fade to black in the third shot; thats because the camera only picked up what was within the dynamic range of the camera and either blew out the highlights or the shadows went to black. That is why without some artistic efforts with focus stacking and/or bracketed shots in post production (bracketing can be hard to do because clouds are constantly moving) the moon always blows out to a white circle.

Because cameras render a picture in two dimensions having the moon nothing more than a white circle in a halo is not always undesirable such is evident in the case of the first shot where the moon, because it shows some detail, looks like the clouds surround it (it would have looked more normal with no detail on the moon itself). The eye/brain connection expects the moon, because it is so far away, to be blown out of focus to a soft white haze with no detail, it suggests the great distance between the moon and the clouds.

On the first shot, the one that looks like the clouds are surrounding the moon, I used a Mead Star scope with the camera attached to the back. Once I got the shutter speed and aperture correct (it took some trial and error, Okay, lots of it) I shot to capture the clouds and then refocused to capture the moon and then stacked the moon onto the clouds in post production. It is an interesting shot but puts the clouds near to the moon and not the earth where they should be.

The third shot looks somewhat normal even with the moon somewhat in focus becase of how quickly the clouds faded to black which kept the clouds nearer to the earth; that is why I did not crop all the black out but kept a large amount around the edges.

.

quote=leadstory These are very nice. I saw simila... (show quote)