It's really amazing how bright the moon is. You wouldn't expect to be able to hand-hold a 1/2000th exposure and get decent photos of it.
Infinity focus is slightly peculiar. My SL1's autofocus was eventually able to lock on to the moon and get decent focus, I think the distance is an issue. I really should have tried shooting it with my 6D, maybe I will tomorrow night. Sometimes when you're shooting at a far distance, you're better off backing off from infinity slightly and stopping down an f-stop or two and letting depth of field compensate. I'd suggest experimenting with it, and I should experiment with it also. When I was trying to manually focus my Lumix, I had to back it off from infinity slightly, it's kind of funky.
My tripod is a Manfrotto and so is my monopod, they both use the same quickmount plate, so maybe I can just use my monopod during totality. I'll have my tripod set up regardless, we'll see what the light levels permit.
So it looks like the Canon autofocus has no problem dealing with the moon. It might be a problem during totality when the light level drops, so I should switch to manual focus at some point. But the Lumix - as I said in the original post, its autofocus sucks and I'm probably not going to use it tomorrow. The camera just isn't good for shooting in deep dark situations.
Thanks for the web site link - I'll look it over in the morning. I was looking for a guide on using Photoshop to do corrections on the moon, but a casual search just had info on how to insert the moon in to photos, nothing really like what I was looking for. I'll do more digging tomorrow.
Excellent idea on the hand warmers - we have an outdoors shop that I'll stop by tomorrow if I remember. I have a heavy pair of gloves that I could at least wear on my left hand and I might be able to wear my mediums on my right. The worst cold exposure that I had was also during a lunar eclipse, back then we did people-powered plane spotting when we ran the laser, now the plane spotting is done by detectors. It was nasty cold and windy: we had three spotters, and it was 40 minutes up, 20 minutes down in rotation. Fortunately we were able to stay inside the dome rather than on the catwalk which kept us outside the worst of the wind.
People talk about using Photoshop to simulate IR in color photos, but it just doesn't look as good IMO, and it seems to me to be a lot of work. With a true IR camera, you can do some interesting things with flash with colored gel filters from what I understand, also with light painting with long exposures and flashlights with gel filters. I wouldn't modify your camera until you were well done with it. I didn't upgrade from my Digital Rebel to a T2i until my instructor said I had to in order to produce larger prints without interpolation - I simply had to have the higher megapixel count. Then when I bought my 6D, the Rebel became surplus and I gave it to my dad. And when I bought the SL1, I sold the T2i to a friend who was using a Rebel XT. I lent it to him as a permanent loan after his wife passed away and the difference in output blew his mind and he later sent me money for it. So basically I keep one generation down when I buy a better camera to have an on-hand backup in case my good body needs servicing and so I can have two different lenses available at the same time. I'll probably always keep an APS-C body for its pseudo-teleconverter bonus - if I ever buy a 5D, I'll keep my 6D and my SL1. If the SL1 ever dies, I'll probably buy a T5i or maybe an SL2. The SL series is a nice and smallish form factor, I'm not sure what differentiates it from the Rebel series or if there is a difference.
I hadn't considered astrophotography in terms of the IR filter and DSLRs. I know Canon has a special 5D without the IR filter, and that lots of astronomers have actual imagers that aren't DSLRs that don't have filters. I'm not remotely an astronomer, though it's something that I'd like to get in to, and obviously astrophotography would be an early interest once I figured out how to reliably operate my telescope and track things. I'd have to totally relearn filters and image processing, it would be interesting!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-01-20 09:31 am (UTC)Infinity focus is slightly peculiar. My SL1's autofocus was eventually able to lock on to the moon and get decent focus, I think the distance is an issue. I really should have tried shooting it with my 6D, maybe I will tomorrow night. Sometimes when you're shooting at a far distance, you're better off backing off from infinity slightly and stopping down an f-stop or two and letting depth of field compensate. I'd suggest experimenting with it, and I should experiment with it also. When I was trying to manually focus my Lumix, I had to back it off from infinity slightly, it's kind of funky.
My tripod is a Manfrotto and so is my monopod, they both use the same quickmount plate, so maybe I can just use my monopod during totality. I'll have my tripod set up regardless, we'll see what the light levels permit.
So it looks like the Canon autofocus has no problem dealing with the moon. It might be a problem during totality when the light level drops, so I should switch to manual focus at some point. But the Lumix - as I said in the original post, its autofocus sucks and I'm probably not going to use it tomorrow. The camera just isn't good for shooting in deep dark situations.
Thanks for the web site link - I'll look it over in the morning. I was looking for a guide on using Photoshop to do corrections on the moon, but a casual search just had info on how to insert the moon in to photos, nothing really like what I was looking for. I'll do more digging tomorrow.
Excellent idea on the hand warmers - we have an outdoors shop that I'll stop by tomorrow if I remember. I have a heavy pair of gloves that I could at least wear on my left hand and I might be able to wear my mediums on my right. The worst cold exposure that I had was also during a lunar eclipse, back then we did people-powered plane spotting when we ran the laser, now the plane spotting is done by detectors. It was nasty cold and windy: we had three spotters, and it was 40 minutes up, 20 minutes down in rotation. Fortunately we were able to stay inside the dome rather than on the catwalk which kept us outside the worst of the wind.
People talk about using Photoshop to simulate IR in color photos, but it just doesn't look as good IMO, and it seems to me to be a lot of work. With a true IR camera, you can do some interesting things with flash with colored gel filters from what I understand, also with light painting with long exposures and flashlights with gel filters. I wouldn't modify your camera until you were well done with it. I didn't upgrade from my Digital Rebel to a T2i until my instructor said I had to in order to produce larger prints without interpolation - I simply had to have the higher megapixel count. Then when I bought my 6D, the Rebel became surplus and I gave it to my dad. And when I bought the SL1, I sold the T2i to a friend who was using a Rebel XT. I lent it to him as a permanent loan after his wife passed away and the difference in output blew his mind and he later sent me money for it. So basically I keep one generation down when I buy a better camera to have an on-hand backup in case my good body needs servicing and so I can have two different lenses available at the same time. I'll probably always keep an APS-C body for its pseudo-teleconverter bonus - if I ever buy a 5D, I'll keep my 6D and my SL1. If the SL1 ever dies, I'll probably buy a T5i or maybe an SL2. The SL series is a nice and smallish form factor, I'm not sure what differentiates it from the Rebel series or if there is a difference.
I hadn't considered astrophotography in terms of the IR filter and DSLRs. I know Canon has a special 5D without the IR filter, and that lots of astronomers have actual imagers that aren't DSLRs that don't have filters. I'm not remotely an astronomer, though it's something that I'd like to get in to, and obviously astrophotography would be an early interest once I figured out how to reliably operate my telescope and track things. I'd have to totally relearn filters and image processing, it would be interesting!