colourful moon

[John Chardine]

I decided to test my new Canon 500mm f/4 II lens tonight on the moon. This is with the 2x tc III attached. Lens was wide open.

I remember Roger C. once mentioning the colour of the moon so for this one I boosted the vibrance and saturation in ACR to see if I could extract some colour. It seems to have worked but are the colours real in the sense that they actually say something about the surface or is it artefact?

Date: 27 September, 2012, Time: 2225h
Camera: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Lens: EF500mm f/4L IS II USM +2.0x, @ 1000 mm
Program: Manual
ISO 800, 1/1000s, f/8

[Sanjeevprakash]

Looks good,John.The details are awesome.Very tough to get a nice detailed moonshot like this one here.The combo looks good and sharp to me.I'll have to try one with the 300 + TC20 and see how does it show up :)

[Roger Clark]

Hi John, Yes, those colors are real and due to compositional differences of the basalts. Nice capture. For comparison, her is an image taken with a version 1 500 with 1DIV and version 1 stacked 1.4 and 2x TCs: http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.moon/web/moon.1div-1400mm.c03.30.2012.c45i5804.c-s-1024v.html You could compare details on the right side of your image to mine. Usually the ultimate limit with these kinds of lenses has more to do with atmospheric stability than the lens, You being further north, the moon is lower in the sky. For me (not good), I get a lot of turbulence from the general wind flow over the Rocky Mountains. Those in Florida often have some of the most stable skies on Earth plus the moon passes closer to oberhead. Roger

[Don Railton]

Hi John

This looks fantastic to me also... the detail is amazing. I have a series 1 500mm and a 1.4 TC and tried a similar shot about 12 months ago. It was all set up on a wobbly undersized tripod so I used live view magnified up to the max to remotely focus. I was pretty happy with my shot in the end but it is nowhere as good as this. Your image has inspired me to give it another go with stacked TC's (have access to a 2x now) and my new tripod & Wimberley 2 head...

And the colours... looks fine to me, unfortunately we recently lost the guy who would really know.

DON

[Jerry van Dijk]

Excellent IQ, John! This is the first time I've seen this variety of colors on a moon image.

[Rachel Hollander]

John - congrats on the new lens. This looks good and interesting about the colors.

TFS,
Rachel

[John Chardine]

Thanks everyone. I would like to stack the TCs Roger but the version IIIs do not allow it without a tube in between and then you lose infinity. I must try another phase to get more detail in other areas. You mention turbulence as well Roger. While photographing the moon I also tried some bright stars and noticed that when they were very out of focus, the disk had moving patterns all over it. I assume this is turbulence in the atmosphere. I also assume this is why stars twinkle, but then I've always wandered why planets don't.