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thewayneI went to the observatory so I knew exactly where the moon would be in the sky. First, two result photos. As always, click to embiggen.
Both photos are full-frame, uncropped. The only Photoshop work was to use levels to darken the midtones a bit and curves to darken the contrast a little. No sharpening. And, of course, convert to JPEG which does all sorts of little twitchy things by itself. Maybe I should have converted them to PNGs.
There is a visible size difference of the moon between the two images. The first is taken with my Canon Eos SL1 with a 75-300 image stabilized zoom at 300mm. it's an 18 megapixel camera. With the SL1's APS-C sensor, it multiplies the focal length by 1.6, turning the 300mm into an effective 480mm. The second image is taken with my Lumix ZS-70 at an effective optical lens focal length of 780mm, no digital zoom.
There's a few problems. First, the autofocus of the Lumix in conditions like this is is terrible compared to the Canon's. And the manual focus in low light absolutely SUUUUUCKS. That being said, it did OK. The Lumix was set on a tripod, and that's a problem because the moon is always moving and there's no way I'm going to be able to track it on a tripod - it's just not possible. If I had a telescope with motorized tracking, that would be different. But I don't. I'm tempted to set up one camera on a tripod in the dome of the 3.5 meter, and I might, I'm undecided on that.
And that introduces a second problem - exposure. As I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the Lumix was on a tripod. The Canon - handheld. The moon - and this is a supermoon and is thus closer and brighter - is surprisingly bright. Believe it or not, these shots were taken at an ISO of 400 with a 1/2000th of a second shutter speed! I can hand-hold most exposures, but when the moon is in or near totality, it will be a problem as the moon will be darker and will require more exposure, I'll probably have to revert to the tripod.
Problem 2A - The height of the moon over the horizon. The moon is going to be awfully bloody high! My tripod cannot directly tilt that high. I have to employ two tricks to make it work so, tricks that I do not recommend to the casual photographer - I've been doing this for decades and I'm uncomfortable doing it myself! I have a right-angle eyepiece adapter that works with my 6D, I'm not certain it has adapters that'll work with my SL1.
Problem 2B - Can I find an exposure mode that'll work with a camera that I set up on the telescope level that will adapt when the moon enters/exits totality? Look at those two images. The moon occupies very little of the frame. Any auto-exposure mode won't cope well under those conditions, but will it if I dial in 3 or 4 f-stops of under-exposure? I'm not sure, I should have tested it tonight.
Problem 3 - It's going to be awfully effing cold! Doing these test shots, I couldn't wear gloves and operate the controls on the Lumix. The buttons are small, and the tripod was tilted waaay back to point upwards. Even with the LCD touchscreen tilted back, I had to take my gloves off to try to use it, which was an exercise in futility.
I might be able to wear a medium thickness glove on my left hand and a light glove on my right with the SL1. But the temperature was just below freezing, and when I went into the control room, the wind was giving me an effective wind chill of 17-20f. My clothing was good enough, but my hands were freezing!
Now, this is my first rodeo - I've never photographed a lunar eclipse before. I knew that I didn't really have the right equipment for it: I need a much longer telephoto. Sigma now has a 60-600 zoom: that would fit my needs, and assuming it's good - and Sigma does make good glass - I could see investing $2,000 in something like that - eventually. But I also need a telescope with tracking. That's several hundred dollars. And I need to rig up an external power supply for whichever camera I'm going to use, which is a hundred or so for an external battery grip, then modifying it so that I can run a cable to external rechargeable batteries. And I might have to create a heating system: most cameras don't like to operate in below freezing temperatures, I know the display in my Lumix goes nuts when the air temperature gets into the 20s.
I will get photos of the eclipse. I won't get an awesome photo series, but it will be a learning experience. Hopefully I won't get frostbite or pneumonia. ;-) And eventually I'll get a paying job, get some money saved up and some equipment purchased. The good thing is that I've been planning to get the battery grips and external batteries to pursue my star streak photography experiments, which illness prevented me from doing anything with last summer.
That's the nice thing about camera equipment: yes, some of the pieces are expensive, but it's rare that after getting it that you only use it for one thing. It's a pretty solid long-term investment, and the lenses last a long time and can be used (usually!) with future generations of the same family of camera bodies.
(Except there's this one thing that I REALLY want to do. It's slightly silly, and it would cost about $300, and I don't know if it'd be worth it, but I REALLY want to do it! You see, digital cameras are VERY sensitive to infrared. So sensitive, in fact, that they have a high-pass filter to block the IR and pass the higher, optical frequencies that we see to the imaging chip. I gave my dad my first DSLR, an original Canon Digital Rebel, 6 megapixels, that's kind of worthless as it's grossly superseded in performance, and he isn't using it, so I'm planning on taking it back. There's this camera shop that, for about $300, they'll take the camera apart, remove the high-pass filter, and re-focus and put it back together, making it a strictly IR camera. The results are very interesting! Here's two communities on LJ devoted to it, the former mostly Russian and fairly active, the latter hasn't had a post since 2013.)
Both photos are full-frame, uncropped. The only Photoshop work was to use levels to darken the midtones a bit and curves to darken the contrast a little. No sharpening. And, of course, convert to JPEG which does all sorts of little twitchy things by itself. Maybe I should have converted them to PNGs.
There is a visible size difference of the moon between the two images. The first is taken with my Canon Eos SL1 with a 75-300 image stabilized zoom at 300mm. it's an 18 megapixel camera. With the SL1's APS-C sensor, it multiplies the focal length by 1.6, turning the 300mm into an effective 480mm. The second image is taken with my Lumix ZS-70 at an effective optical lens focal length of 780mm, no digital zoom.
There's a few problems. First, the autofocus of the Lumix in conditions like this is is terrible compared to the Canon's. And the manual focus in low light absolutely SUUUUUCKS. That being said, it did OK. The Lumix was set on a tripod, and that's a problem because the moon is always moving and there's no way I'm going to be able to track it on a tripod - it's just not possible. If I had a telescope with motorized tracking, that would be different. But I don't. I'm tempted to set up one camera on a tripod in the dome of the 3.5 meter, and I might, I'm undecided on that.
And that introduces a second problem - exposure. As I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the Lumix was on a tripod. The Canon - handheld. The moon - and this is a supermoon and is thus closer and brighter - is surprisingly bright. Believe it or not, these shots were taken at an ISO of 400 with a 1/2000th of a second shutter speed! I can hand-hold most exposures, but when the moon is in or near totality, it will be a problem as the moon will be darker and will require more exposure, I'll probably have to revert to the tripod.
Problem 2A - The height of the moon over the horizon. The moon is going to be awfully bloody high! My tripod cannot directly tilt that high. I have to employ two tricks to make it work so, tricks that I do not recommend to the casual photographer - I've been doing this for decades and I'm uncomfortable doing it myself! I have a right-angle eyepiece adapter that works with my 6D, I'm not certain it has adapters that'll work with my SL1.
Problem 2B - Can I find an exposure mode that'll work with a camera that I set up on the telescope level that will adapt when the moon enters/exits totality? Look at those two images. The moon occupies very little of the frame. Any auto-exposure mode won't cope well under those conditions, but will it if I dial in 3 or 4 f-stops of under-exposure? I'm not sure, I should have tested it tonight.
Problem 3 - It's going to be awfully effing cold! Doing these test shots, I couldn't wear gloves and operate the controls on the Lumix. The buttons are small, and the tripod was tilted waaay back to point upwards. Even with the LCD touchscreen tilted back, I had to take my gloves off to try to use it, which was an exercise in futility.
I might be able to wear a medium thickness glove on my left hand and a light glove on my right with the SL1. But the temperature was just below freezing, and when I went into the control room, the wind was giving me an effective wind chill of 17-20f. My clothing was good enough, but my hands were freezing!
Now, this is my first rodeo - I've never photographed a lunar eclipse before. I knew that I didn't really have the right equipment for it: I need a much longer telephoto. Sigma now has a 60-600 zoom: that would fit my needs, and assuming it's good - and Sigma does make good glass - I could see investing $2,000 in something like that - eventually. But I also need a telescope with tracking. That's several hundred dollars. And I need to rig up an external power supply for whichever camera I'm going to use, which is a hundred or so for an external battery grip, then modifying it so that I can run a cable to external rechargeable batteries. And I might have to create a heating system: most cameras don't like to operate in below freezing temperatures, I know the display in my Lumix goes nuts when the air temperature gets into the 20s.
I will get photos of the eclipse. I won't get an awesome photo series, but it will be a learning experience. Hopefully I won't get frostbite or pneumonia. ;-) And eventually I'll get a paying job, get some money saved up and some equipment purchased. The good thing is that I've been planning to get the battery grips and external batteries to pursue my star streak photography experiments, which illness prevented me from doing anything with last summer.
That's the nice thing about camera equipment: yes, some of the pieces are expensive, but it's rare that after getting it that you only use it for one thing. It's a pretty solid long-term investment, and the lenses last a long time and can be used (usually!) with future generations of the same family of camera bodies.
(Except there's this one thing that I REALLY want to do. It's slightly silly, and it would cost about $300, and I don't know if it'd be worth it, but I REALLY want to do it! You see, digital cameras are VERY sensitive to infrared. So sensitive, in fact, that they have a high-pass filter to block the IR and pass the higher, optical frequencies that we see to the imaging chip. I gave my dad my first DSLR, an original Canon Digital Rebel, 6 megapixels, that's kind of worthless as it's grossly superseded in performance, and he isn't using it, so I'm planning on taking it back. There's this camera shop that, for about $300, they'll take the camera apart, remove the high-pass filter, and re-focus and put it back together, making it a strictly IR camera. The results are very interesting! Here's two communities on LJ devoted to it, the former mostly Russian and fairly active, the latter hasn't had a post since 2013.)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 09:02 am (UTC)Focus-wise, wouldn't manual focusing to infinity work? Or are there additional factors I'm not thinking of?
I found this lunar eclipse exposure guide, in case it's of use to you http://www.mreclipse.com/LEphoto/LEphoto.html
Feel you about the freezing-hands issue combined with the need for dexterity - I face similar issues when stargazing in winter. My current solution relies on two glove layers - the underglove is a thin full glove with touchscreen patches on the fingers (similar to this https://www.decathlon.co.uk/trek500-silk-liner-gloves-blk-id_8396267.html) and the overglove is a fingerless glove combined with mitt covers (https://www.decathlon.co.uk/trek500-fingerless-gloves-blk-id_8396265.html). I also use chemical handwarmers - the cheap non-reusable ones are basically baggies full of grains of something hydrophilic, all watered up, and then dusted in iron powder and packed in a non-oxygen atmosphere. Open the pack, and they start rusting, and will stay at about 45-55 Celsius for 6-12h, depending on how much oxygen they're getting. I'll stuff a pair under each underglove, inside the palm where the arteries are, and, if the situation and my single-gloved fingertips are becoming desperate, crack open another pair, stuff it in the overmitts' finger covers, and keep the covers on whenever not actively fiddling with stuff.
The infrared stuff is indeed gorgeous! Regular high-pass filters actually block out some of the visible red, as well, so some astrophotographers get theirs replaced with astronomy-grade filters that don't do that. Considering the 350d's sensor, that's probably not a worthwhile modification for my current gear, but who knows what the future will bring!
no subject
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!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-20 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-21 11:02 am (UTC)Can’t wait! We had mostly cloudy skies and I slept through it anyway. Currently it is 0.0°F and windy.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-21 05:58 pm (UTC)They came out OK, but I didn't get the laser showing which was something that I was really hoping for. Had a lot of fun talking to the NBC morning show crew, though. Harry Smith and the others were very nice people. And I got compliments on the 10 minute video that I made for my wife: they said it was very helpful on their pre-planning, getting some advance info on the process and layouts.
The one good thing was the weather! The temperature never dropped below 35 and I never noticed the wind! While my hands did get cold, it was never a problem. MUCH warmer than Monday during my test shots.