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Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Full Moon for my Dutch Friend

So here's my try at the full moon posted for my Dutch friend in Malaysia.  Settings are f/9 1/250 sec, ISO 400 300 mm.  Still doesn't look as fantastical as yours  . . .   so tell me why  . . .

3 comments:

mymymyohmy said...

Hey luvnlife (aka D. which I didn't know),

I think it's a cool photo, seriously. No image stabilization, hand held at an equivalent of 480mm, that's hard!

To be honest, I thought it would be almost impossible, so I'm impressed.

As to the differences, there's a few things:

- since you're at 480mm (300mm on a cropped sensor is really 300*1.6) your shutter time of 1/250 is still on the slow side. Rule of thumb is 'at least equivalent to the focal length' so 1/400 or faster migh help (unless there's image stabilization).
- I used the Canon 70-200mm F4 IS which is simply a great lens, as in one the best zooms ever for these cameras. You're struggling with a lens with a huge focal range (what was it exactly? 50 - 300?) which is probably simply less in quality at the extremes, causing some abberations and loss of sharpness. Contrast seems a bit low, but might be helped with some post processing, and it's difficult to tell if focus was spot on.
- My lens has image stabilization, not sure about yours, but that certainly helps.
- I think there's some atmospheric conditions that differ. The photo seems a bit 'wavy' around the edges. Could be the lens, could be the atmosphere.
- Last but not least, your camera itself is older. I'm not sure what it was (10D?) versus a 5D mark II, that's gotta count for something.

But seriously, seems like a great result for the setup you had.

Do you shoot RAW or JPG?

luvnlife said...

Thanks for the feedback! I just got to work and noticed the haziness around the edges - I'm thinking that is partly atmosphere. I wasn't sure I would be able to get the shot since we had had several cloudy/rainy days and that day had been the same. I too thought about upping the contrast after seeing it here. . .

My lens does not have IS and I use a 20D - definitely the 5D Mark II counts for something!!

I am still struggling with my focus regardless of what I shoot. I've not had time to really practice and I have some difficulty being able to tell when I'm shooting because of the small screen on the camera and the fact I now have to have reading glasses - gasp!

Oh, I shoot in JPG because I can't get the RAW to download. I think It might be a glitch with Vista and the fact I'm not all that computer savvy. . .

I'll practice on the not so full moons on a clear night and use a faster shutter speed and see what I come up with!

mymymyohmy said...

I'd definitely consider RAW anyway. I'm obviously not sure how you get your photos from the camera to the PC, but JPG or RAW (CR2) should not really matter. I use the Canon utility (comes with the camera on a CD) but you can also use a card reader or open up the camera under devices, then drag the files to the computer.

If you mean you cannot _view_ them under Vista, that's correct. CR2 doesn't show. You need specific software (although with some codecs installed Vista/Win7 does show them in thumbnails, but it's not flawless).

You need Digital Photo Professional (DPP, also from Canon, and also on the CD) to view/edit them (or some other RAW converter). Then from DPP after editing, you convert them to JPG, much like your camera does. Only now you can first change things before it's turned into JPG.

Advantages are: more room to change things in hindsight. Especially white balance, brightness etc... Some stuff you don't have to decide on at all 'in camera'. With the RAW files you can decide afterwards (in DPP) and will give the same result as the camera would have when you convert to JPG. RAW gives you more data to work with compared to JPG.

Downside: the files are bigger and processing photos becomes more elaborate and time consuming.

Then again, if results matter, RAW gives more options.

If you have the CD you can install all these utilities, then download the upgrades (assuming you have the CD and it came with the 20D) from the Canon website.