topic Re: Taking moon picture in EF & RF Lenses

Taking moon picture

Sanjaydesai — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 05:52:38 GMT

I have Canon 6D camera. I am trying to take picture of full moon using EF 70 300 lens. Even at 300mm the picture of moon appreas to be very small. I know I need to use higher focal length but at 300mm the size of moon should be relatively large.

I do not know why this happens. can anyone tell me what is required to be done.

Taking moon picture

Sanjaydesai — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 06:54:47 GMT

Actually I see very tiny moon on my LCD panel even at 300mm focal length.

Re: Taking moon picture

MikeSowsun — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 13:32:12 GMT

@Sanjaydesai wrote:

"........................at 300mm the size of moon should be relatively large..................”

Why do you think it should be relatively large? Don’t go by the photos you see other photographers post. Most of them use a combination of longer lenses and cropping.

300mm on a Full Frame camera does not bring the moon very close. Put that lens on a APS-C crop camera like a 7D or 80D, but you will also need to crop the image.

The best solution is a longer lens.

Re: Taking moon picture

kvbarkley — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 14:37:26 GMT

300 is too short for the moon. This uncropped shot was taken with a 600 mm lens on an APS-C camera. Your moon will be half as small because of the difference in focal length and 1.6x smaller because of the crop factor:

Re: Taking moon picture

Waddizzle — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 14:54:41 GMT

You would want 800-1600mm of focal length. I do not advise using a low budget focal length extender.

Stay away from those low budget super telephoto prime lenses, too. I bought one by Vivitar. Wound up buying an eyepiece that converted it into cheesy telescope that kids love.

Re: Taking moon picture

Waddizzle — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 20:23:05 GMT

@kvbarkley wrote:
300 is too short for the moon. This uncropped shot was taken with a 600 mm lens on an APS-C camera. Your moon will be half as small because of the difference in focal length and 1.6x smaller because of the crop factor:

Nice shot.

I think taking a photo of the Moon is a little more complicated than at first glance. It is not just getting a good exposure. Getting the proper White Balance is the real trick. I am told the Moon is a near perfect reflector of broadband sunlight, whatever that means.

Shot with a 7D2 and a Sigma 150-600 “C” with a slight crop..

NASA astronauts have said that the Moon is the color of street asphalt, but with a thin coating of ash colored dust. I use the “Looney 11 Rule” and manually set color temperature around 5100, which is my typical setting for a bright sunny day..

I think your shot is a little bright, while mine is a little dim.

Re: Taking moon picture

TCampbell — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 00:15:49 GMT

The moon is about 1/2° from edge to edge — on average ... it’s orbit isn’t perfectly circular so it’s distance to Earth (about 30 Earth diameters and the moon is roughly 1/4 the diameter of Earth. A basketball and tennis ball side-by-side make a good estimation of the scale) varies by just a little over 10%.

Normally when I shoot a moon photo, I connect the camera to a telescope and I’m shooting at roughly 1100mm. I still have a little room... I’ve worked out that even 1500mm would still fit (but it would be tight).

Anywhere in the 1000-1500mm range is pretty good. At 300mm you’ll get a respectable but small image but it will be small (the image wont “feature” the moon. It would be better for a landscape with a dusky “blue hour” shot with the moon in the sky). If you want the image to feature the moon then you would need to crop heavily or use a longer focal length lens.

The moon’s exposure uses something called the “Looney 11” rule... at f/11 the shutter speed is the inverse of the ISO settting (e.g. ISO 100 then use 1/100th sec. at ISO 200 then use 1/200th sec, etc.)

The image above is not “straight out of the camera”. I always touch a few controls to adjust contrast, maybe a tiny bit of sharpening, white balance, etc.

I usually try to shoot near a crescent or 1/2 moon phase so the sun lights the moon from the side and this creates great shadow-contrast on the craters. The moon has a 3-dimensional look. Near a full moon you lose th shadows and the moon will look a little more 2D.

Re: Taking moon picture

Waddizzle — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 01:12:51 GMT

“The moon is about 1/2° from edge to edge — on average ... “

This is the first thing Tim said, and it is the most important to understanding focal lengths, and photographing the Moon. He is referring to the Angle Of View, or AOV. A lens can be described by its’ focal length, but a lens can also be described by its’ AOV.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view

I hate to use Wikipedia, but this page has great illustrations and layman’s explanations, as well as the techno-babble. There are angle of view calculators on the web, too. I just found one called points-in-focus dot com.

My 600mm lens on a full frame body has an AOV of 4.1 degrees, according to the manufacturer. Tim reports that the AOV of the width of the Moon is about 0.5 degrees. I assume that he is referring to horizontal AOV. This means that you can fit roughly 8 Moons side by side into a viewfinder frame with that setup.

My Online AOV calculator reports that my 600mm lens would have an AOV of 3.44mm on a full frame sensor body. It reports that my Canon APS-C sensor 7D Mark 11 would have an AOV of 2.12 degrees, which means about four Moons would fill the screen side to side, edge to edge.

Re: Taking moon picture

Mitsubishiman — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 06:56:08 GMT

The advice given is the best information you will receive.

Canon 5DSr / Canon 100-400 f2.8L / Canon 2X Extender III / 1/6 Crop Factor = 1280mm

Re: Taking moon picture

cicopo — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 15:19:03 GMT

Best explain "Canon 100-400 f2.8 L" because I've never heard of it.

Re: Taking moon picture

Mitsubishiman — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 16:34:35 GMT

Sorry, my bad f4. 5

Re: Taking moon picture

TCampbell — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 17:10:36 GMT

I'm guessing it's one of the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L lenses. At 400mm it's f/5.6 if wide-open. Using a 2x it's f/11.

I wasn't following the math of how you got to 1280mm.

If you use an angular field of view calculator (there's one on this page: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm ) you'll find that if using an APS-C size sensor Canon camera (crop factor 1.6x) that a 1500mm lens has a .6° angle of view in the narrow direction. At 1600mm it's .5 ... but since the moon can technically be just fractgionally larger than a half degree if it's at perigee, the moon would go right to the very edge of the frame with no room left. So I tend to say 1500mm is the max if you want to fit the whole moon in the frame.

But that's on an APS-C camera... the 5DSr is full-frame so there is no crop-factor (the crop-factor is 1.0).

Re: Taking moon picture

Waddizzle — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 17:15:27 GMT

@Sanjaydesai wrote:
I have Canon 6D camera. I am trying to take picture of full moon using EF 70 300 lens. Even at 300mm the picture of moon appreas to be very small. I know I need to use higher focal length but at 300mm the size of moon should be relatively large.

I do not know why this happens. can anyone tell me what is required to be done.

While you may not have an expensive super telephoto lens, photographing the Moon is just one thing to photograph in the night sky. You could also capture landscape scenes shot at night showing the stars. It helps to find what is known as “dark sky” to photograph the stars.

I almost tossed this photo, until I turned out the lights in the room and looked at it. The above photo was shot less than 20 miles from Times Square in NYC. You can barely see any stars in the night sky in midtown Manhattan.

Re: Taking moon picture

TCampbell — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 17:27:51 GMT

There are a couple of moon exposure nuances. One is fairly obvious, the other is not.

Most beginners tend to over-expose the moon because it seems like it should be bright. You are used to seeing the moon at night ... so compared to everything else, it is bright. But during the daytime, the moon is technically just as bright... but seems a lot dimmer beause your eyes are adapted to daylight instead of nighttime.

The obvious one is that just because there's a "Looney 11" rule doesn't mean you have to shoot at f/11. That "rule" is just a quick way to know the correct baseline exposure without having to trust a light meter (in-camera metering is fooled by all the blackness of the sky and tends to over-expose unless you use spot-metering). You can use any f-stop available by just trading stops of aperture for stops of exposure.

The less-obvious one is an issue called "atmospheric extinction". It's the reason you don't go blind looking at the sun at sunset (but you would if you looked at it for a long time at mid-day). It's also the reason the moon looks dimmer and more orange at moonrise or moonset.

Extinction is the notion that when you are photographing the moon, you are looking through a lot more "air" than nearly any other subject you normally shoot. If you're shooting people, they are not very far away from the lens... you aren't shooting through much "air" and that means issues of air transparency don't impact your exposure (unless you're shooting through a lot of smoke or fog, etc..) With the moon, it the air can look reasonably clear, but tiny particles in the air will cut down on the amount of light you get.

This is one reasons why... even though the moon is lit by the sun - so you'd think the "Sunny 16" rule would work -- you use f/11 instead. There's enough air to reduce light transmission. That's "extinction" (extinction of light ... specifically because it is being absorbed by atmosphere). (The other reason is that the moon is not very reflective).

So then the question becomes how much air are you shooting through. If something is in space directly above your head, then you have to look through 1 "air mass" of atmosphere. If you're looking at something 30° above the horizon, the sin of 30 is .5 ... so you are looking through 2 (the inverse of .5) air-masses. At 10° it works out to 5.75 air-masses *except* the curvature of the Earth makes the math a little more complicated so it really works out to be 5.6x.

Anyway, if the air really is clear you get a small impact. If the air-transparency is poor, you have a huge impact. This means there is no rule for how to adjust exposure based on the altitude angle above horizon... just know that the closer things in space get to the horizon, the more light is absorbed.

If you want to learn more about the technical nuances, read this article for a good intro: https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/transparency-and-atmospheric-extinction/

This may make things sound really complicated... "how will I know if I am really using a correct exposure". This background an idea of what is happening and why. BUT...

Ultimately you can turn on "the blinkies" (exposure clipping warnings) and make sure no part of the moon is over-exposed. (Digital photography has all these wonderful advantages ... and this is one of them.)

Re: Taking moon picture

Mitsubishiman — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 18:05:34 GMT

I set the crop factor to 1/6

Re: Taking moon picture

TCampbell — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 18:11:35 GMT

I love these shots of the night sky. Your shot has Perseus (the cluster of stars near the bottom just to the right of the tree is in the middle of Perseus and it's the "Alpha Persei Association" (an open cluster). The brightest star in that cluster is Mirfak.

It also has Cassiopeia, Pegasus, and Andromeda ... including the Andromeda Galaxy. I actually do see the point of light in your photo which looks like a star, but is actually the bright core of the galaxy (you might be able to tease out more detail depending on your exposure).

A tracking head is an inexpensive way to take much longer exposures ... these can capture enough light for nebulae to show up in the photos. The popular models are the Sky Watcher "Star Adventurer" (they make two models) and the iOptron Sky Tracker (they also make two models). They're around $300... $400 with all the trimmings.

Re: Taking moon picture

Waddizzle — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 19:58:35 GMT

@TCampbell wrote:
I love these shots of the night sky. Your shot has Perseus (the cluster of stars near the bottom just to the right of the tree is in the middle of Perseus and it's the "Alpha Persei Association" (an open cluster). The brightest star in that cluster is Mirfak.

It also has Cassiopeia, Pegasus, and Andromeda ... including the Andromeda Galaxy. I actually do see the point of light in your photo which looks like a star, but is actually the bright core of the galaxy (you might be able to tease out more detail depending on your exposure).

A tracking head is an inexpensive way to take much longer exposures ... these can capture enough light for nebulae to show up in the photos. The popular models are the Sky Watcher "Star Adventurer" (they make two models) and the iOptron Sky Tracker (they also make two models). They're around $300... $400 with all the trimmings.

Thanks, Tim. it was a very clear sky in early December. Air temperature was around 40 degrees F. I think the camera was pointed SSE when I took this shot. This was shot with a 6D and a Rokinon 14mm T3.1 Cinema lens. I used my big video tripod because it was a little breezy that night, and that tripod is as steady as a tree trunk.

The tree is being lit up by a street light about 100 yards behind me. I was surprised to see the tree, but I guess I should not have been. I only took a few shots moving the camera to get around the tree.

NYC was glowing in the lower portion of the sky, and was showing up in the shots. I did not think I was getting good exposures, so I packed it in after about a few shots. This shot is actually cropped to remove the glow from NYC.

[EDIT].

I have considered buying a tracking head, but I live in NYC. I took the above shot during a visit to a relative. Decent dark sky is at least 3 hour drive away from me. I wish it were not so far away, because I would definitely take more exposures.

Re: Taking moon picture

TCampbell — Sun, 28 Oct 2018 20:48:15 GMT

You can use a light pollution filter such as an Astronomik (that's the brand name) "CLS" filter (there's also a CLS-CCD version but you don't need the "-CCD" version. It is designed for cameras with no IR filter. Your camera has an IR filter so the "-CCD" version isn't needed).

These filters work by blocking the parts of the spectrum common to street lights such as Sodium & Mercury lights... but allow the other parts of the spectrum through. By lucky chance... the emission wavelengths for deep-sky emission nebula don't coincide with the wavelengths of street lights. So by filtering the street lights, you can greatly eliminate the light pollution. I know astronomers who have observatories in urban skies and these filters (as well as narrowband filters) are the only way they can do any imaging at all.

There are lots of vendors who make light pollution filters, but the trick is that many of these 14mm lenses don't have filter threads (my Canon 14mm f/2.8L has a non-removable hood and no threads). Astronomik makes a version (two versions, actually) of this filter that clip into the camera body (behind the lens). They make a version for Canon APS-C cameras and another version for Canon full-frame cameras (they call that the EOS XL clip filter). This means you can use the filtering regardless of what lens you use and/or if it has filter threads (that's a nice feature).

One caveat is that if you use the Astronomik CLS "EOS Clip" on APS-C cameras, you must not attempt to mount a Canon EF-S lens. The problem is that since an EF-S has a rear element that slightly protrudes into the camera body, it would hit the filter. But you can use EF lenses with it.

Another caveat is that as cities begin to switch to LED street lights, those things have emission bands all across the spectrum and are not easily filtered out. These light-pollution filters are really mostly for mercury & sodium lights.

You get moderately wonky color which will need some adjustment in post processing... but it does let you work around light pollution issues. There are guys who just take lots of long exposures through the light pollution filter to capture the nebulae (nebulae don't glow in any colors that are blocked by the filter so they show in correct color) but the stars are full-spectrum. Since stars are brighter, they just shoot a few extra frames to capture the stars (unfiltered) and then merge in post processing. PixInsight has a star-mask generation tool so we can grab the stars from the normal color image, but the nebulae from the filtered images ... and merge them.

These light pollution filters block a lot of light so you'll find you will need to stop down (they want you to use f/3 or above) and that means you have to use a tracking mount. But once you use a tracking mount, time is no longer a problem... you can expose for as long as you need (even a 10 minute exposure is no problem if you have a good polar alignment.)

Re: Taking moon picture

kvbarkley — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 22:50:44 GMT

Check out Ken Rockwell's What's New page (Note: this will eventually be gone if you are reading this in a few months)

He uses an EOS-R, EOS-R to EOS adapter, a Cano 1.4x adapter, a Canon 2x adapter and a Sigma 60-600 lens for the equivalent of a 1680mm focal length.

Re: Taking moon picture

TCampbell — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 16:53:28 GMT

On Ken’s page, he refers to the EOS R as being APS-C. I found that confusing because the EOS R is a full-frame mirrorless body. Where is the APS-C coming from?