The *Official Photography Thread*

Sick

 

Jealous brah

 

Well, I screwed up that shot.

I took that shot of the full moon last month with the Samyang 500mm lens and t-mount 2x teleconvertor.

I thought it came out very nice, but knew it could be better... the focus was okay, but just a little soft.

Wife bought me the Tamron 200-500 for my birthday, and I picked up a Vivitar 2x teleconvertor (cheap, but it passes metering information and aperture so at least it's not full-manual like the Samyang).

Set up Friday night and took a shot with the new lens.
So I used the same settings... 1/250 at 5.6... and it was freaking blown out. Thought "WTF? This lens can't be letting that much more light in!"
Kept trimming the exposure down and finally got down to 1/1600, stopped down to f16! Yikes....

Downloaded the image, and while it was cool to send to my wife for her phone wallpaper, I was not impressed when I zoomed in.

Then I realized that the ISO was not what I wanted. I thought I checked it and set it to 100, but the Exif in the RAW file is reporting that it's up at "2EV over 3200"

So... These are full-sized crops of the same area of the moon from the original jpegs.
The one on the left is the Samyang, ISO-400, 1/250 @ 5.6, the one on the right is the Tamron, ISO-3200, 1/1600 @ 16.

I would just like confirmation that the posterization-like effect I'm seeing on the right is noise from the extreme ISO setting, but overall the focus and clarity would be better at a more normal ISO....

 

Not quite as creamy as Shay's shot but I had to try out the roses from v day.

Awesome clouds TJ.


13 by sconniehailer, on Flickr

 

There isn't any reason to be shooting at ISO 3200. The moon is a ball of light just like the sun from the sun hitting it to light it up.

Try ISO 100, F11 1/125-1/250. That should be about right. It's what I always shoot at. I wouldn't use the teleconverter either. Just zoom it to 500mm and then crop it in post to fill the frame.

I usually shoot the moon handheld but at 500mm I would probably shoot it on a tripod and focus manually with your live view zoomed in to get your focus dead on. Just don't zoom (live view) too much as it will get grainy looking and harder to get the focus right.

The teleconverter will actually decrease your sharpness. Also try setting the Tamron at 400mm instead of 500mm. From what I've read it's a little sharper there.

Try that and show us what you get. I think you'll be a lot happier with your result. Also shoot the moon when it's higher in the sky. There is less atmosphere to shoot through and it improves the picture.

 

I'm I want to take pictures like that.

What is the fused that your pics are showing? Tell me more about this please.

Very nice shot Marc!

 

I know. I intended to shoot in the 100-400 range.
I think what happened was I hit the shutter in auto to ballpark what the camera wanted to run the exposure to, and it kicked the ISO to 3200, then when I went to manual control it left the ISO setting there.

I need to play with the Live view. So far, everything I've done has been through the eyepiece.

That was pretty high in the sky. I'll maybe set up for a few more shots tonight, though it's a bit cloudy right now.
I was VERY happy to have the new Slik 700 tripod. Fully extended with the riser, it gave me enough to point the camera almost straight up and still get my 6ft high eyeball under the eyepiece.

I guess I could live without the teleconvertor. The images above are unretouched crops from the jpegs, so I guess I could handle the image being a bit smaller for the most part. Even at 50%, the size is nice for my desktop (1920 x 1080).

 

Thank you Murph. Was a tough edit, reds like that always gives me grief...

 

You're pixel peeping.

Just play with the crop and you will get an image to fit the screen that looks great.

 

I remember about the reds. I just deleted that other picture from months ago of yours off my desktop a week ago. lol

Scratch that. I just looked and deleted it now. I must have deleted the jpeg before.

 

Yea Ben, totally!

haha Murph I cant believe you still had that file!

 

tweak the WB..be fine.

 

Okay so i have had some issues lately with SD cards...is it comon? they work totally fine in the camera but they won't read on my computer? i have reformated them a few times...

 

The only way I can open my SD card on my computer is if I right-click and then click open. For some reason it comes up with an error if I just double-click it.

 

mine won't even mount up.

 

Straight in, or still in the camera?

I plug the camera into a USB 3.0 port... haven't tried pulling images from the built-in reader.

 

using a reader. Never have pluged my camera in.

 

Ya, I tried to pull the reds up a bit, and while the car was still very orange, the background started going pink and I lost the yellow.

 

Hmm.

I never had problems on the old system, but that was XP with only USB 1.0, and I never messed with a card larger than 16gb (MP3s for the Garmin GPS).

 

I like that! I was going to get a side shot like that, but I couldn't get a good one. Nice!