2023 Flower Moon (Pennsylvania)

[Soopahmahn]

I caught the nearly full Flower Moon last night. The composition was carefully planned and I almost jumped for joy when the moon appeared exactly where I wanted it. I have a couple of technical complaints but the biggest issue was the extreme haziness which made the moon very soft. I spent a while messing with it to try to get a slightly more “detailed” look.

Shot over the roof of a barn located on Pennsylvania’s only tricentennial family-owned farm, founded 1717 in Lancaster, PA. Truly a bucolic moment, hope you enjoy and always eager for feedback to improve!

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[MrFotoFool]

A bucolic scene indeed. I don't think the softness of the moon is due primarily to atmospheric haze (though that may be a contributing factor). I think it is due primarily to not enough depth of field. A 500mm lens has very shallow depth of field (area of focus), which is more pronounced the closer you are to the subject of focus. Since only a portion of the barn is visible it means you were too close. You can tell because it's not just the moon that is out of focus - even the trees behind the barn are out of focus because they are beyond the field of sharp focus. To get this scene the way you want it, you will need to stand much farther back - far enough so the entire barn fits in the frame, and also stop down to a smaller aperture like f13 or f16. Just my two cents.

 

[MorganP]

Keep it up.

 

[Annamaria]

Very nice! Quite the perfect executed plan. Wonderful composition and quite different.

 

[Soopahmahn]

A bucolic scene indeed. I don't think the softness of the moon is due primarily to atmospheric haze (though that may be a contributing factor). I think it is due primarily to not enough depth of field. A 500mm lens has very shallow depth of field (area of focus), which is more pronounced the closer you are to the subject of focus. Since only a portion of the barn is visible it means you were too close. You can tell because it's not just the moon that is out of focus - even the trees behind the barn are out of focus because they are beyond the field of sharp focus. To get this scene the way you want it, you will need to stand much farther back - far enough so the entire barn fits in the frame, and also stop down to a smaller aperture like f13 or f16. Just my two cents.

Appreciate that, and I think you're right. The trees are a dead giveaway. I should have stopped down substantially more. The barn was nowhere near infinity focus (which would be perfect for the moon). The moon is just simply out of focus (and hazy). The barn was approximately 1250 ft distance, and I was at 500mm on my full frame. I did substantially crop this down.

This might have been a good moment to try focus stacking with my D850? I've cheated a little before and waited for the moon to be positioned by itself, and taken a sharp moon shot, then copied that into the original image to show the enhanced detail.

Thank you!

 

[MrFotoFool]

...I've cheated a little before and waited for the moon to be positioned by itself, and taken a sharp moon shot, then copied that into the original image to show the enhanced detail...

I haven't done that with digital (at least not that I remember), but I did do it a couple times when I still shot slide film, using the double exposure button. This button prevents the camera from advancing the film to the next frame before you take the next shot. In my most outlandish experiment, shown in this slide scan, I took a wide angle shot with a slow shutter speed on a tripod. This is the flamingo exhibit at San Diego Zoo during their summer night openings. Then I changed lenses to a telephoto and turned the camera around and pointed it up towards the moon and used a fast shutter speed to maintain detail.

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[Soopahmahn]

Clever! Looks awesome, thanks for sharing!