Good time to capture a large image of the moon

Burt Campner wrote:
JC Dill wrote:
Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
mianileng saying something like:

Full moon may not be the best time for capturing an interesting
shot of the moon, but for those who want to get the moon to cover
the largest number of pixels, a coincidence of peak perigee and
full moon is the ideal time.
On an APS-C sensor, a frame-filling moon for me is with an old Novoflex
600mm f:8 and 2x telecon. Full moon brightness makes focusing no
problem, even at f:16, but it moves quicker than you think when it's
filling the frame.
The moon moves approximately 1 diameter in 2 minutes. At moonrise as
the moon peaks over the horizon, it will be fully visible in ~2 minutes.
At moonset, from the time the moon touches the horizon until it
disappears will also take ~2 minutes. (The same is true of the sun,
sunrise, sunset.)

So if you have the moon more-or-less "filling the frame" it will move
entirely out of the frame in about 2 minutes! If you move the camera
ahead of the moon's path so that the moon is only 1/2 visible in the
frame, it will come fully into view in about 1 minute.

Keep in mind too that when the moon is near the horizon you'll be about 3,958
miles (6,370 km) further from the moon than when it is overhead. Overhead won't
provide for as interesting a photo as when it's near the horizon, but if you're
going for the largest number of pixels illuminated by the moon then it'll help a
bit.

Yeah I thought of that but it's more interesting near the horizon, and
it'll be nearer for that position so most dramatic then, presumably.
Also looks like we're in for cloudy weather though.

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

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Paul Furman wrote:
Burt Campner wrote:

Keep in mind too that when the moon is near the horizon you'll
be
about 3,958 miles (6,370 km) further from the moon than when
it is
overhead. Overhead won't provide for as interesting a photo as
when
it's near the horizon, but if you're going for the largest
number of
pixels illuminated by the moon then it'll help a bit.

Yeah I thought of that but it's more interesting near the
horizon, and
it'll be nearer for that position so most dramatic then,
presumably.
Also looks like we're in for cloudy weather though.

Same here.

"mianileng" wrote in message
...
Someone asked not long ago about the best time for capturing the largest
possible image of the moon. For a given camera, lens and location, the
coming full moon on Dec 12 is a good time. This is a time when the moon is
not only at perigee, but also close to the nearest it ever gets to the
earth in recent times. The exact times of perigee and full moon differ by
only 5 hours - full moon at 4:39 pm and perigee at 9:38 pm, both UT.
Source:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pacalc.html

According to this online calculator, the moon will be at less than 357000
km at the coming perigee, compared to more than 370000 km at some perigees
and more than 400000 km at apogee.

Full moon may not be the best time for capturing an interesting shot of
the moon, but for those who want to get the moon to cover the largest
number of pixels, a coincidence of peak perigee and full moon is the ideal
time.




Would have been great here if the rain hadn't been around. We've had an
inch of rain so far today in Sydney.

M-M wrote:
In article ,

I really don't think anyone will be able to tell a difference,
even
in a photograph. It's like shooting something 24 feet away then
taking one step forward and shooting again.

Maybe if the clouds break, I'll get a photo and then compare it
to one
taken at a different date. I'll use the same lens and we can
compare
side-by-side.

Even if the sky is cloudy, the moon will be out all night so if
it
peeks through even for a moment, a photo is possible.

Here's a composite of a shot I took tonight (full at perigee) and
another shot on the 19th of last May (approx. full at apogee).
Both shots were taken with the same camera at the same focal
length - 8 MP, 420mm equiv.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...gee_apogee.jpg

You can judge the difference in apparent sizes yourself.
Unfortunately, both shots were taken through heavy haze and the
images are not as sharp as they could be.

(My broadband is down again and I uploaded the image with
dial-up. After having used broadband for almost a year now, times
like this are a real pain).

M-M wrote:
In article ,
"mianileng" wrote:

Here's a composite of a shot I took tonight (full at perigee)
and
another shot on the 19th of last May (approx. full at apogee).
Both shots were taken with the same camera at the same focal
length - 8 MP, 420mm equiv.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...gee_apogee.jpg


And neither are cropped? If these are the relative full-frame
sizes,
the difference is quite remarkable.

By uncropped I assune you mean unresized. Yes, both images are
unresized 100% crops, pasted together for convenience. The
difference is more than most people expect without doing some
arithmetic. The variation in size is what makes it possible to
have total and annular solar eclipses.

JC Dill wrote:
Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "mianileng"
saying something like:

Full moon may not be the best time for capturing an interesting
shot of the moon, but for those who want to get the moon to cover
the largest number of pixels, a coincidence of peak perigee and
full moon is the ideal time.

On an APS-C sensor, a frame-filling moon for me is with an old Novoflex
600mm f:8 and 2x telecon. Full moon brightness makes focusing no
problem, even at f:16, but it moves quicker than you think when it's
filling the frame.

The moon moves approximately 1 diameter in 2 minutes. At moonrise as
the moon peaks over the horizon, it will be fully visible in ~2 minutes.
At moonset, from the time the moon touches the horizon until it
disappears will also take ~2 minutes. (The same is true of the sun,
sunrise, sunset.)

So if you have the moon more-or-less "filling the frame" it will move
entirely out of the frame in about 2 minutes! If you move the camera
ahead of the moon's path so that the moon is only 1/2 visible in the
frame, it will come fully into view in about 1 minute.

So if you have rock steady tripod and a lens that will give 2000
pixels across the diameter of the moon it will take about 1/15th sec
to move one pixel (if I've got the arithmetic right :-).

--
Chris Malcolm

mianileng wrote:
M-M wrote:
In article ,

I really don't think anyone will be able to tell a difference,
even
in a photograph. It's like shooting something 24 feet away then
taking one step forward and shooting again.

Maybe if the clouds break, I'll get a photo and then compare it
to one
taken at a different date. I'll use the same lens and we can
compare
side-by-side.

Even if the sky is cloudy, the moon will be out all night so if
it
peeks through even for a moment, a photo is possible.

Here's a composite of a shot I took tonight (full at perigee) and
another shot on the 19th of last May (approx. full at apogee).
Both shots were taken with the same camera at the same focal
length - 8 MP, 420mm equiv.
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...gee_apogee.jpg

You can judge the difference in apparent sizes yourself.
Unfortunately, both shots were taken through heavy haze and the
images are not as sharp as they could be.

Wow, big difference.
There is a break in the clouds with a storm moving in, see if I get a
chance. I didn't manage any horizon shots.

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

M-M wrote:
In article ,
Paul Furman wrote:

Wow, big difference.
There is a break in the clouds with a storm moving in, see if I get a
chance. I didn't manage any horizon shots.


I got a break in the clouds and made a comparison. One @ 247,797 miles
from 5/31/07 and the other from last night @ 221,590 miles:

http://www.netaxs.com/~mhmyers/d80/moondist.jpg

Cool. I don't have a comparison shot and not sure what the scale is a
day later but I did get a nice calm break in the clouds:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/...738f9a7a_o.jpg
flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehill/3106171957/

Nikon D200, Tokina 300mm f/2.8 + 2x TC + 1.4x TC, 1/2.5 seconds, f/32,
ISO 100, reduced 60%


--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

Here's a nice diagram from someone on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthurseabra/3105282438/

--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

M-M wrote:
In article ,
Paul Furman wrote:

I did get a nice calm break in the clouds:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/...738f9a7a_o.jpg
flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehill/3106171957/

Nikon D200, Tokina 300mm f/2.8 + 2x TC + 1.4x TC, 1/2.5 seconds, f/32,
ISO 100, reduced 60%


Good one, nice resolution of the craters- rare when so full. I like that
lens and it's versatility. (Are you sure 1/2.5 sec is correct? The
flickr page says 1/400.)

I swapped it out for a better shot at 5:30 AM, the air was still then. I
didn't notice ISO was set to 1000.


Here is mine from perigree, but still low in the sky:
http://www.netaxs.com/~mhmyers/d80/DSC_14049w.jpg

D80, 1000mm (Fieldscope 82), f/13, 1/250, ISO 200.


--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam