Daytime is my favourite time for photographing the moon, and the originals of all these shots show a beautiful blue sky. They look pretty, but by converting to monochrome it's possible to pull out so much more detail. These were all converted in Lightroom simply by desaturating all the colour and increasing the black control to give an even background. I added a little noise reduction and sharpening.

One day I'll get a plane as it cross the face of the moon, but for now this will do.

moon and plane

This one is probably the best shot of the moon I've managed (partly down to the processing) and I've included a link to the full size version.

moon

moon_0303120505

Click for full size version
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Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.

This Post Has 17 Comments

  1. Great, I like the details that could be seen on full size one. Also, first one is great. I almost wanted to ask you how did you make trail THAT visible at night then I read what you wrote at the beginning one more time :doh: Smart trick :yes:

  2. Yes; this technique seems to be producing good results for you … I think I'll try it.

  3. dW, I guess you end up with more data to play with and it's also easier to control noise.

  4. Darko, I nearly left the first one alone. This is what it looks like before messing around.

  5. Marilyn, well they certainly got a close-up view! Thanks for the link. :alien:

  6. Here's my attempt. I had no patience to use my heavy tripod, and I shot it through window. And that can be seen in poor quality. Even small trembling caused by camera just multiplies very easily with long lenses. So, good tripod is a must have and use 😀

    Cool idea to turn moon pictures taken in daylight into B/W :up:

  7. Kefan writes:

    I am going to have to try that! I can probably approximate the effect directly by shooting B&W through a red filter… very nice!

  8. Sami, last time I tried to photograph a moon, besides small tripod I used, I set my camera to 5 seconds pause before making a shot. Even press on a button made disturbance on a photo, with longer exposition :left:

  9. Sami, that's very blue! I was hand-holding the camera, but I had a good shutter speed. It's the same at night with a long lens. The moon is bright enough to shoot at around 1/800s so a tripod isn't necessary.

  10. Kefan, it took me a few goes to get the processing right, but the moon is up so often in the day that it seems a shame only to photograph it at night.

  11. Darko, it depnds on your camera. If you can get enough of the moon in the frame (more moon than sky) you shouldn't need a tripod. Stars are different. For those I use a tripod and remote trigger, and they still blur!

  12. Originally posted by Words:

    For those I use a tripod and remote trigger, and they still blur!

    Isn't that because of speed of Earth's rotation?

  13. Darko, yes if I use an exposure above around 15 seconds, but it happens on much shorter exposures as well. Just bad photos! Honestly.

  14. Originally posted by Words:

    The moon is bright enough to shoot at around 1/800s so a tripod isn't necessary.

    Oh, maybe not with my lens that does not have aperture wide enough. But I'll try again some day 🙂 I discovered there also must be some haziness in the air that day I took the shot. Therefore none of the many shots were not sharp enough.

  15. Sami, the last shot was taken at 1/500, f/7.1, ISO 400. The sky was very clear.

  16. Maybe I have just overexposed most of my moon shots 😆

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