night outing with new lens

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

D700
300mm f/2.8 VR II with Nikon TC-20E III
600mm
ISO 800
f/7.1 at 1/500s
Manual mode
Matrix Metering
Auto white balance
struggling with tripod :p

100% crop to 1024x800 pixels, SOC

Finally pull the trigger on the new lens, didn't really get a chance to try it out until at night. So point at the moon and shoot. Did try handheld too, VR seems alright :)

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Repost with curve, sharpen and NR.

[PeterCollins]

Hi Mate,

I been playing with the moon myself as well,

Seems a little hot for my tastes, here is what i would have done.

You may like it you may not :) if not just tell me to sssshhh and i will go hide :p

Otherwise its a great image, i love moon shooting :D

[Ricardo Rodriguez]

Hi Thanaboon, my first impression on your initial post was good, but after a few seconds something didn't seem right. Then I saw your repost and really love it. Peter's version has a shining, silvery look to it: also excellent. Now I'm jealous; need to get a shot like that someday soon!!!!!

Ricardo

[Vilma Rodriguez]

Hi Thanaboon, I like your repost.

Vilma

[Julie Brown]

Thanaboon, your repost is much better. It really brings out the features. I also like Peter's version for the same reason that Ricardo mentioned.

I've got to tell you that when I saw your first post and read that you used a 300 f2.8 with a 2X TC, I went right out into the back yard and shot the full moon. It just happens that this week I rented a 400mm f2.8L IS lens. I noticed the full moon tonight, but it didn't dawn on me to take advantage of the lens this way until I saw your post. I also used a 2X TC, so I got 800mm. :cool: Thanks so much for the inspiration!:D

[Kerry Perkins]

Thanaboon, nice job on the repost and congrats on the new glass. Peter, your repost looks a tad over-sharpened to me. Curious what others may think, as sharpening is about the toughest thing for me to get right...

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Thanaboon, nice job on the repost and congrats on the new glass. Peter, your repost looks a tad over-sharpened to me. Curious what others may think, as sharpening is about the toughest thing for me to get right...

Kerry, it looks to me that Peter's repost either is over-sharpened or over-contrasted (too sharp a curve). The repost has also picked up a fair amount of jpeg artifacts and contrasted-sharpened them into view (horizontal lines). It is hard to get good results sharpening (or adjusting contrast) working with what amounts to mono-chrome in 8-bits (what jpeg is) because there are only 256 gray scale levels.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Kerry, it looks to me that Peter's repost either is over-sharpened or over-contrasted (too sharp a curve). The repost has also picked up a fair amount of jpeg artifacts and contrasted-sharpened them into view (horizontal lines). It is hard to get good results sharpening (or adjusting contrast) working with what amounts to mono-chrome in 8-bits (what jpeg is) because there are only 256 gray scale levels.

Cheers,

-Michael-

Yes, I did try a quick PP after posting with RAW file and the result came out with much less artifacts. Another advantage of shooting RAW I guess.

This one with RAW then to jpeg, toning down the lower right part a big.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Yes, I did try a quick PP after posting with RAW file and the result came out with much less artifacts. Another advantage of shooting RAW I guess.

Thanaboon,

Greetings. I wanted to say that the image has great detail (the 300VR + TC20EIII is just the combo I'm wanting, so your post is most interesting to me) looking at it in detail in PS.

Presenting the detail in all it's glory is challenging. As I said above, jpegs in 8 bits only have 256 grayscale levels. That means the SOC shot contains all the detail in perhaps only 70-80 levels for this shot (about in rgb 170,170,170 and up). If you need perhaps 10 levels to show a nice sharp edge... you can see the problem...

Definitely, something to work on from a 14-bit raw and 16 bit tiff.

Also, a little less exposure would help. This is a case similar to getting white feather detail... shifting exposure a little to the left helps with the detail.

Congrats on the lens acquisition!

Cheers,

-Michael-

[PeterCollins]

Hi Guys

yeah its not easy doing mods on a jpg from the web :p

Just how i would have looked at it, i think thats what i love about Moon photos so many different ways to PP them! :D:D:D

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Love moon shots, a good tripod will make an average lens look good. In this case after repost, makes a great lens and 2x look really nice.