Just wanted to share this photo of the Waning Gibbous Moon with our readers, captured with the Nikon D810 and John “Verm” Sherman’s amazing Nikkor 800mm f/5.6E VR monster coupled with the TC-17E II teleconverter. I have not been able to get this much detail from such long focal lengths before, because the shutter vibration on previous generation Nikon DSLRs would shake the camera too much at the beginning of the exposure. We set everything up on a sturdy tripod, then rest the front of the lens on car’s hood, with a soft pillow in between to dampen the crazy vibrations occuring at 1350mm focal length. Set the camera to Manual mode, ISO 800, 1/250s @ f/11, then used camera’s Live View to acquire perfect focus on the moon. With the “Electronic front-curtain shutter” turned ON, we set the camera to Mirror Lock-Up mode, set “Exposure delay mode” to 3 seconds for additional protection, then fired away. Here is the result:
Thanks to the Electronic front-curtain shutter, you can now capture images like this without worrying about vibration (I wish Nikon went back and added this feature to all existing Nikon DSLRs!). There is no shutter going off at the beginning of the exposure, so as long as you have vibration taken care of before the exposure starts, it will be perfectly sharp. Keep in mind that the moon moves fast at such focal lengths, so you have to have fast enough of shutter speed to reduce motion blur.
I brought the image into Lightroom 5.6, set the Clarity slider to +35, dialed -0.30 Exposure (it was a bit bright), reduced the Whites slider to -30, increased Sharpening to 50, 1.0, 50 with a Mask of 50 to reduce the amount of noise that is added while sharpening (as explained in this article), checked “Remove Chromatic Aberration” in the Lens Corrections module (there was visible CA on the edge of the moon), then set the camera profile to “Camera Standard”. Cleaned up the extra noise a little bit with Nik’s Dfine, then exported at 2048 pixels wide resolution from Lightroom.
If you have never captured a photo of the moon before and need some tips, check out my detailed article on photographing the moon. You don’t need an $18,000 lens for that – you can capture the moon with any budget telephoto lens such as a 70-300mm or a 300mm f/4. For example, I captured this shot of the moon with the Nikkor 300mm f/4D lens (see my detailed review) and a 1.7x teleconverter a few years ago.
Shot a similar image only the moon is waxing in this shot. D7100, 500mm, locked down on a tripod. No fancy settings, F4 @ 1/250. Shot his at twilight hence the bluish sky. I think sometimes we over-think the difficulty of these shots a bit :)
great shot with pretty incredible detail . by the way which tripod you are using ? and which do you use during product testing.
Here’s an old trick for those without electronic front curtain shutters: get set up, focused, etc, and have ready, a black piece of posterboard larger than the lens’s aperture. Set your camera to aperture priority, so as to let it “drive” for exposure. Hold the black card in front of the lens, near but not touching the lens, and open the camera’s shutter … with a remote, or even without. Wait a few seconds for vibrations to damp out (how long depends upon how stable your setup is), and then whisk the black card away … your “shutter” is now “open” in that the sensor is finally getting light. If you did it right and didn’t bump the lens, camera, tripod, etc., this “shutter” opens with absolutely zero vibration. And when the sensor’s gotten enough light … depends a lot on the lens, but I’ve gotten good moon exposures in as little as 1/30, the shutter closes. Voila! You’ll be surprised with how crisp things get when you take all the “mechanicals” out of the system.
Wow, that is amazing, quick question: Taken that you are focussed to infinity Why did you bother to stop down to F11? is I presumes because that’s the best optical performance of that lens?
Nasim,
Lovely detail. Thanks for the link to your article using a 300mm lens to photograph the moon. Will get out my old 300mm AIs +TC-301 converter and give it a try on my D610 however I think it will be difficult to match the results I get from using a basic telescope and an old point and shoot attached Afocally to the telescope’s eyepiece. The following picture was taken a few years ago using a Panasonic Lumix LX3 on a 8″ Skywatcher Dobsonian. Picture is JPEG straight out of camera and could do with a bit of work in PS to remove the CA and sharpen it up a bit. A ‘moon’ filter between camera and eyepiece would improve the contrast somewhat.
www.flickr.com/photo…717997149/
I just have to chime in here. All my life I wanted to ‘shoot the moon’. So over the past week I did – with my D7100 and my new Tamron 150-600mm lens (Bigron). I purposely did it hand held and had 8 x 10 prints made with NO corrections/changes of any kind except cropping. I’m still a rookie at photography so I need to practice getting it right without computer aid.
While not as razor sharp as Nasim’s stunning shot, I can say that I’m a very happy camper with my results, without spending $18,000 + $3300 + teleconverter. But I’d trade for the fancy equipment at the drop of a hat!
The Bigron: not so good for near stuff, but for the price, it is amazing at long distances.
Stunning photo, Nasim.
Try it again using a D7100. I shot the moon two nights ago using my old 80-400mm (VR on) handheld with both my D810 in 1:2 crop and my D7100 in full DX. The 7100 images were sharper, although I increased the sharpness, clarity and contrast one click each on the D810. All other settings were the same (Auto WB, ISO 800, spot metering, single/center AF point, etc.) and I was shooting at 1/1,600th second f/8.
I realized that my D7100 has 24M pixels crammed into a DX sensor that’s only about 43% the area of the D810’s 36MP sensor. The D7100 pixels are smaller and more densely packed.
I’m curious if you will find that the D7100 produces a better image than the D810.
Roger, that only holds true if the lens outresolves the sensor. In the case of the 800mm + 1.7x, you might be right, since the 800mm is a very sharp lens.
So Nasim, the combo pf the d7100 with a 300mmf4 plus tc17ell is actually usable for this purpose?
Absolutely!
Stunning and somehow eerie at the same time!
Thanks Daniel!
Wicked!!
Thanks Keith!