Photos - the moon series

I thought to start my first photo show-casing with the moon, for several reasons.

The first of them is that the moon has always fascinated me, and I find it beautiful. Even though we always see the same side (its rotational period is identical to its orbital period, so the same portion of it always faces our planet),  atmospheric conditions can alter what we see.

The second reason ties-in at this point, because our gear and knowledge both can equally affect what photo we may take, and thus what we see can be greatly different.


Indeed, my first experiences were with a labtec webcam - offering no manual settings,  this camera had a small 2MP censor resolution (the 3MP interpolated didn't improve this much), a limited 4X un-stabilized zoom, and no manual control of exposure. 

In 2005-2006, I took 7 moon photos with that camera. From these, I selected the 4 you see here.

There is a lot of noisy grain - which I left un-edited and only cropped pics 2-4, while keeping the original display of pic  # 1 as a reference. 

You see how bad that noise is. However, there is a certain charm to these photos, where colors are accidental and probably depend on a lot of physical factors, such as atmospheric conditions and light refraction, but such a limited webcam offered no control over anything. I could edit these, but they wouldn't be what they were. 

I like how the clouds add a nice touch of light on photo 1, whilst #4 turned to look like a pink Saturn, whilst it is still our own moon. I'm not even sure what those tiny objects to the immediate right and further left sides of the moon, as I don't recall what I saw over 11 years ago. 

In all photos, you notice how brightness is totally out of my hand, just like my first shot (photo 5) with my Sony DSC-H2 camera ;  and as I had no knowledge of aperture nor exposure, I didn't close the iris, nor reduced the duration of exposure.  In fact, I used the automatic mode, and you can see how the moon is clearer than my webcam versions, but it is way too bright, not showing surface detail. 

Not knowing yet of image stabilization, nor using tripod for any of these hand-held photos, any movement translated either in doubling the moon (6 ; 8), or that trail (9). However, securing my hand, I managed to photograph the moon aligned with a leaf hanging down from a tree, thus looking almost like a lamp (7). 

All these shots were from July 2006 and I liked these artistic results, which again, aren't edited in this montage.

That sony camera was a huge upgrade over the webcam. Resolution jumped from 2 to 6MP; zoom from 4 to 24! 

After another 18 photos, I finally learned to use my camera's semi-automatic mode, where I saw the exposure bias function, allowing me to add or reduce the amount of light that comes in.

This by August 2006, I could start noticing a little bit of the moon's surface, but the photo was still far too bright. 

3 months later, I had another opportunity, in early November 2006, to further reduce the luminosity of my shots. From that shoot, photos 11 & 12 you see here offer more detail, and I added next to them their edited versions. I merely tweaked the levels, contrast and luminosity in Gimp 2.0, a free software that I'm still learning how to use, and know only a handful of its function. 

The semi-automatic mode chose the following : 

an aperture of F3.7, with 1/30th of a second of exposure time and 80 ISO (that's basically light sensitiveness) for photo 11. 
same aperture, but only 1/125th of a second and 125 ISO for photo 12.

On both, I chose to delete 2 steps in the exposure bias, thus reducing the overall luminosity, but as you notice, both photos really needed some work, as we have this hallo discoloration around the moon. 

I barely tried moon photos afterwards, but in 2011, not long after I upgraded to my Fuji HS10, I tried my luck in broad daylight. These shots 13 & 14 show the result with minimal editing - merely the levels to darken that blue sky around the moon. 

For photo 13, I chose aperture F5.6, exposure time 1/8th of a second at 800 ISO, with no exposure bias. From what I Recall, I also used a CPL filter additionally to the UV that I had been using off & on with my Sony camera. The CPL filter reduced the amount of light received by the censor. 

Photo 14 presents F8 (= closing the iris a lot further). 2 seconds exposure at 100 ISO. During this shoot , I had moved my camera, intentionally and the result is the moving moon, because the exposure lasted a whole 2 seconds.

The moon's a fascinating subject. Playing around with zoom, apertures and exposures, moving the camera or placing it in strategic places can yield artistic photos, whilst more basic approaches can offer clear images, showing the surface detail - and which depend on your resolution, zoom level (remember that the higher the zoom, the more need for a tripod, to stabilize the image, because even a slight share of the hand can cause a blurry photo).

I'll discuss tripods and their benefits in an upcoming post.