900mm Moon

900mm Moon, 1/500 s @ f/11, ISO 200
Nikon D90 + Kenko TelePlus MC7 AF 2.0X DGX + AF-S NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED

Yes, it’s sharpened. And cropped at 200%.

This morning a colleague of mine mentioned to me how big the moon was, and that he regretted not having his camera with him at the time. So, I remained vigilant. Sure enough, tonight it’s nice and clear;  a perfect opportunity to try out the Kenko MC7 on a moon shot.

It’s also pretty cold out, so I took this quickly, hand-held, with manual focus assisted by VR. If I had used a tripod, it would have been perhaps a little sharper. Compare it will my previous 450mm moon.

Previously taken with the NIKKOR 70-300mm zoom, cropped 400% and sharpened.

Basically this is a 200% optical enlargement over the previous version shown above. This is what the 900mm Moon looks like, unprocessed:

900mm Moon before post-processing.

My curiosity got the better of me, so I also tried it with the Phoenix/Samyang 500mm f/8 Catadioptric:

1500mm Moon, 1/200 s @ f/22, ISO 200.
Directly from the camera, no post-processing

This is a nice focal length to work with for moon shots. The contrast was pretty good as well. But it’s very soft, and with no VR it was very difficult to focus manually, even with the DR-6 Right Angle Viewfinder. Apparently, this catadioptric lens does not fair well in cold weather, because the longer I stayed outdoors, the softer the images became. This was the second image I took, and was handheld. I broke down and used a tripod for subsequent images, but they actually got worse. More testing is in order to see if the temperature was indeed a factor. But I can safely say the Phoenix Samyang is capable of better.

New Lens, New Moon

Taken with NIKKOR 70-300mm Zoom, enlarged and sharpened.

I was excited to see how a moon shot would turn out with the Samyang/Phoenix 500mm cat lens, and tonight was clear enough to give it a try.

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Full Moon Tonight

Handheld shot of the moon, AF-S NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 IF-ED.

Taken just moments ago. It seems to be a good test of any telephoto lens to attempt this. This was taken with the Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED at 1/400s, f/8, ISO 200, handheld. At the long end, it’s 450mm on the D90. Thank goodness for VR, not that shooting at 1/400 sec. is that challenging. The moon is so bright that you can shoot this fast with a low ISO and relatively small aperture to capture all the detail.

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