Saturday, September 26, 2009

I've Been Mooned!

Got the bug again this evening ... decided to shoot the moon with the D300, 300mm F4 AFS and the TC17e. I just wanted to see again how much magnification I could lay down ...

I only shot two images and one was slightly sharper than the other so I processed only that image. I used Topaz Adjust 3 and hammered it to pull out details. I quite like the result. This is not quite a 100% crop ... I downsized it a wee bit in order to avoid losing too much sharpness and leaving too much noise. Lots of wonderful craters because it is a half moon with the terminator slicing through lots of cratered territory ...


In order to see just how detailed this is, I will link an image of Serenity Sea (Mare Serenitatis, Serenitatis Basin) -- the topmost flat and dark area in the image -- shot by Simon J. Porter from this website:


That's a much cleaner image and you can see that the shadows on the sea itself and the mountains on its left edge are all there ... I am amazed at how much detail Topaz was able to extract from my little 300mm lens. Now I really want a small telescope :-)

Many other beautiful close ups of the moon can be found here.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Very Nice Shot!
This is the kind of thing that DSLR's or EVIL's shine; one can always get a better, longer, faster lens!
I am hunting a TC for my Oly's, they are NOT cheap but I will snag one sooner or later.
Congrats on your traffic with the F70, actually I think you've been far more in depth with it than most putative 'reviews'.
Plus you give very useful suggestions on how to best use it.
THAT is very helpful.
Some reviewers, esp a nameless one of the F200EXR, failed to even read the manual and so the value is hence nil.
Sigh.
Ah well, good night and thanks for sharing the great Moon shot

Kim Letkeman said...

Thanks Lili.

So sue me said...

Look a the shadows of the mountains on Serenity! Wow...

Kim Letkeman said...

Thanks Sue. I went looking for a good image of Serenity Sea and added to the post. The details are even closer than I thought ... I want a telescope! :-)