Thats a really good hand held shot especially at 500 mm. Thanks for sharing.

If you're interested:

For something that (1) does not emit its own light and (2) begs to have its picture taken, the moon is surprisingly hard to photograph. Single shots of the moon are really, really difficult because of something called seeing. Astronomical seeing is the reason stars twinkle and refers to the blurring of astronomical objects caused by the Earth atmospheric turbulence. Think of heat waves raising off of a hot surface. So the best single images of the moon, sun and planets occurs during times of excellent seeing. However, for capturing images of the moon and planets, high-speed video capture is the preferred tool that's used. Specialized software is used to select only the sharpest frames out of thousands, you can effectively throw away all of the frames that are blurry and affected by poor astronomical seeing. Even during periods of average seeing conditions, there will occasionally be a split second of excellent seeing. By capturing high frame rate video for seconds or minutes at a time, you're more than likely to capture a few moments where the planet appeared very sharp. You can then use software to pick out those sharpest frames, and then stack them together to reduce noise.

WOW! You are amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Jay

I would just like to second every wow, excellent, wonderful, beautiful, splendid, spectacular and every other similarly descriptive adjective I may have missed. Most of all, I want to thank you for sharing this stunningly amazing work.

Jay

Definitely cuter than a bugs ear! Very nice set and also quite enjoyable. My favorite is the last one...the download is super. Thanks for sharing you work.

Jay

There certainly is a significant difference between what you see in the small image versus the download. In the small image, the fence looked like a series of dashed lines. In the download, I was blown away by the quality of the fence and field in the image, how nicely you captured the light from the MW providing reflecting off the fence rails and I also loved the angularity of the composition. Super great job. The MW on the other hand appears too muted in the small image but in the download it dominates the image. As an astroimager myself, I'd like to offer a few suggestions for the next time you have a great opportunity to put these subjects together in an image that appears to have been taken under some very dark skies. I envy your access to dark skies!

1. Your stars are egg-shaped. Shorten your exposure times and boost ISO a bit. Use the 500 rule to estimate the shutter speed to use. The 500 rule provides a very quick and dirty estimation of the shutter speed that should be used to ensure sharp stars. Working above the calculated shutter speed will cause egg-shaped or tailing stars. Working at or below it should give you pinpoint stars.

For full-frame cameras you simply divide 500 by the focal length of the lens. For example if you use a 24 mm lens: 500/24 = 20.8 s so round down to a 20 s exposure. If there isn't a 20 s setting, round down to the next lowest shutter speed. For a crop sensor divide 500 by the focal length of the lens multiplied by the crop sensor value. For a Cannon 7DMII and a 24 mm lens the calculation is 500/(24 x 1.6) = 13 s exposure. Again round down to the next available shutter speed if needed.

Something I find helpful is to base your exposure time on one of 3 rules: the 600, 500 and 400 rules. The 600 rule is useful when imaging objects high in the sky that are almost directly overhead (roughly at 70º - 90º) The 500 rule works best for objects from 30º - 70º. The 400 rule is useful for objects from the horizon to about 30º.

A more accurate calculation of the shutter speed that should be used to ensure nice round stars is the following:

(35 x Apeture / 30 x pixel pitch) / focal length = shutter speed in seconds. Where pixel pitch in µm = (physical width of camera sensor in mm x 1000) / #pixels in width of the sensor.

2. Photograph the foreground at an exposure that is pleasing to you. Do the same for the MW and combine the images in Photoshop. Even better is to take a number of images of the MW (10 - 50) and stack them and combine them into a single image to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the MW as compared to the background. That will also provide more detail to the MW in the combined image. Stacking can be done in Photoshop. There is also a free program used by astroimagers called Deep Sky Stacker that works very well.

3. With the exception of comets, auroras and light domes off in the distance, the color green basically doesn't exist in the dark skies above. Your MW has an abundance of green. Processing the green out would make the MW much more realistic and pleasing. You might try adjusting the temperature and tone to achieve a better color balance to accomplish that. Additionally, you might consider balancing the brightness of the MW in relation to the landscape because the MW overpowers some really nice work on the foreground, at least in my option. You can try tweaking the exposure, contrast, shadows and highlights to accomplish this.

Thank you for posting the download as it's in a different world compared to the small image. These are simply my opions about things you might want to consider. I hope something I wrote is useful to you or someone else who reads this.

Best wishes,

Jay

Good for you getting away. You've gotta bring back a good image of the lunar eclipse for us east coasters! Enjoy your time, be safe and travel safely.

Both images are well done. What I appreciate about the new one is the brightness of the disk and the three dimensionality of the core. Great effort and enjoy your vacation.

Jay

Dear Photogirl,

She is an absolutely gorgeous animal with a mother who is a bit of a legend in that part of Botswana. Her mother has been the subject in photos that made the cover of several books about Botswana. The one that stood out to me was a B&W of the mother covered head to tail in thick mud carrying a huge fish as she emerged from a watering hole...very striking image that words don't do it justice. Thank you for your comments.

Dear Sakitson,

Thank you for your kind words and invitation to come back and share other photos/stories in challenges. It would be an honor to do so.

Dear ET,

Thank you very much for your interest in the photo and the story. It's always a pleasure to share stories and to hear/read them as well.

Sorry this is late but just saw the Challenge. This is my first post other then astroimages. The photo is a young leopard taken at Savute in Botswana. Right after taking the photo, we watched her make her first kill, a large spring hare. Earlier, her mother killed an impala, sliced it's underside open, removed the entrails, buried them, then dragged the thing 100 yards to a tree and carried it 30' up to a notch for safe keeping.

(Download)

I love the iridescence in the Ibis. I live in FL as well and have not seen a Green Heron (great capture as well). Thanks for sharing your work.

Jay

Hi,

What is the band width of the Ha filter...3 nm, 7 nm, 12 nm, other? What were the exposure lengths for the Ha data? It looks to me like you don't have long enough exposure for the Ha data. As the band width of the Ha filter gets smaller, it lets less and less light in. Often 10 or 15 min individual exposures are required to capture sufficient Ha depending on the target. It also looks like you mentioned that the filter is really messy. Just something to ponder. Hope it's helpful.

Jay

You did a great job at keeping the stars small. This is a favorite target of mine but I can't control the bloat and after 3 attempts, have really nothing to show. Thanks for sharing.

Jay

Super nice work. Thanks for sharing.

Jay