Super Moon - May 5, 2012

Regular readers of the blog know that I have been experimenting with photographing the moon over the last few months. I was all psyched when I learned there was to be a "Super Moon" this evening Saturday, May 5. The full moon was coinciding with its perigee or closest approach to earth.

Anticipating that the weather might be crappy on Saturday, I took some pictures on Thursday just before the full moon phase. I think this one turned out pretty good. I don't think there is much more I can get from my lens or camera. A different location in a higher altitude with less and cleaner air might improve the results a bit. Some more details below on the specific camera and post processing techniques I used on this photograph.

We'll see what happens weather wise this evening. So far it isn't looking good - very overcast. Maybe it will be better in your location.

Click to enlarge for a better view.



























See the link below for some info from NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/supermoon_2012.html

For this photo, I used a Nikon D7000, Sigma 120-400mm at 400mm, ISO 100, F10, 1/125 sec exposure time. I used the live view mode and zoomed into the image and focused the lens manually. For post processing, I adjusted the right hand slider in the Quick Fix histogram. I then cropped the image, then applied high pass filter at a radius of 11.42 pixels and 56% opacity (and overlay). I then applied an unsharp mask at 25% intensity, 5% radius and 10% threshold. All adjustments in Capture NX2. Applying the sharpening in this order seems to generate less noise. I then reduced the size to 1200x800 and applied more unsharp mask at 20% intensity, 3% radius, 2% threshold, 80% opacity and saved as jpg with 100% quality.

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