Moonrise over Sleeping Indian

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DRwyoming

DRwyoming

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Was heading home this evening when the moon rose up over what's formally known as Sheep Mountain but the local's call Sleeping Indian. Just had to stop for some shots.

Nikon D850, 70-200mm E FL @180mm, f/9, 1/10", ISO 80
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Snapshot2020 said:
Very nice photo, you Nailed that exposure.
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Thanks.

Truth be told I blew out the moon on my first couple of exposures even with negative exposure comp dialed in. So I went straight to spot metering the moon setting it to a stop and a third above neutral exposure. That drove the rest of the scene pretty dark but I pulled the shadows back up out of the raw file in post. I was happy that last bit of sunset color in the upper sky didn't get lost in the processing.

In retrospect I probably should have shot a bracketed sequence and created an HDR stack in post.
 
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DRwyoming said:
Thanks.

Truth be told I blew out the moon on my first couple of exposures even with negative exposure comp dialed in. So I went straight to spot metering the moon setting it to a stop and a third above neutral exposure. That drove the rest of the scene pretty dark but I pulled the shadows back up out of the raw file in post. I was happy that last bit of sunset color in the upper sky didn't get lost in the processing.

In retrospect I probably should have shot a bracketed sequence and created an HDR stack in post.
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Thanks for replying as to how you photographed and processed that beautiful photo. Yes Bracketing would have been a good option.
btw... I have that same combo D850 with a recently purchased 70-200 E.
 
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Very nice DR! Question: where did you make your focus on this landscape to be able to get sharp image from front to infinite? I remember a photo I took last year during full moon in december; my principal subject (Quebec bridge) was sharp, but not the moon.
 
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Cristobal said:
Very nice DR! Question: where did you make your focus on this landscape to be able to get sharp image from front to infinite? I remember a photo I took last year during full moon in december; my principal subject (Quebec bridge) was sharp, but not the moon.
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I focused on the sharp peak to the right of the photo (the sleeping Indian's nose :) ) and then spot metered on the moon itself and adjusted to more than a stop above a neutral exposure.

I didn't stop down tremendously and just swagged it at f/9 because I framed such that there really aren't any close in objects. The moon is crazy far away of course but those nearest foreground ridges are still at least a mile away. I tried some compositions with closer foreground grass but even then the closest grass was probably a couple of hundred meters away from the camera.

A quick look at the PhotoPills app shows hyperfocal distance for a 180mm lens at f/9 on a full frame sensor to be right around 400' (120m). If I'd focused on an image element there with this lens at f/9 it would give everything from roughly 200' (60m) to infinity in good focus. But if there were foreground elements much closer than that in my scene I'd either have to stop down further and risk image softening from diffraction or focus stack.
 
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DRwyoming said:
I focused on the sharp peak to the right of the photo (the sleeping Indian's nose :) ) and then spot metered on the moon itself and adjusted to more than a stop above a neutral exposure.

I didn't stop down tremendously and just swagged it at f/9 because I framed such that there really aren't any close in objects. The moon is crazy far away of course but those nearest foreground ridges are still at least a mile away. I tried some compositions with closer foreground grass but even then the closest grass was probably a couple of hundred meters away from the camera.

A quick look at the PhotoPills app shows hyperfocal distance for a 180mm lens at f/9 on a full frame sensor to be right around 400' (120m). If I'd focused on an image element there with this lens at f/9 it would give everything from roughly 200' (60m) to infinity in good focus. But if there were foreground elements much closer than that in my scene I'd either have to stop down further and risk image softening from diffraction or focus stack.
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Thank you very much for your explanation; it's very clear!
 
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Cristobal said:
Thank you very much for your explanation; it's very clear!
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And just to finish the thought, if there were really close elements in this image focus stacking would be the only real answer to keep sharp focus. Even at f/22 the PhotoPills DoF calculator shows that a 180mm lens on a FF camera has a hyperfocal distance of roughly 48 meters and if focused there the DoF would extend to infinity but the closest in focus object would still have to be roughly 37 meters from the camera.

So if there's a foreground element closer than 37 meters from the camera and you want an object at infinity focus like the moon to be sharp you can't really get there with aperture alone when using a 180mm lens and that's a good use case for focus stacking. Ideally that would be automated focus stacking like Nikon's Focus Shift feature as the earth keeps rotating and the moon keeps moving in the sky so you would want to get all your focus stack images shot as quickly as possible.

Of course the other approach to close foreground objects and deep DoF is a much wider angle lens but then the moon would be pretty small in the frame.
 
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DRwyoming said:
And just to finish the thought, if there were really close elements in this image focus stacking would be the only real answer to keep sharp focus. Even at f/22 the PhotoPills DoF calculator shows that a 180mm lens on a FF camera has a hyperfocal distance of roughly 48 meters and if focused there the DoF would extend to infinity but the closest in focus object would still have to be roughly 37 meters from the camera.

So if there's a foreground element closer than 37 meters from the camera and you want an object at infinity focus like the moon to be sharp you can't really get there with aperture alone when using a 180mm lens and that's a good use case for focus stacking. Ideally that would be automated focus stacking like Nikon's Focus Shift feature as the earth keeps rotating and the moon keeps moving in the sky so you would want to get all your focus stack images shot as quickly as possible.

Of course the other approach to close foreground objects and deep DoF is a much wider angle lens but then the moon would be pretty small in the frame.
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Thank you again! I am not familiar with focus stacking, but in the event of getting a new camera, I will consider this device in my choice; I believe for example that the sugar maple forest floor photo I posted recently could have been improved by focus stacking.
 
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Cristobal said:
I believe for example that the sugar maple forest floor photo I posted recently could have been improved by focus stacking.
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Yes, I just took another look and though I really like that image it is certainly a good candidate for focus stacking.

Basically focus stacking makes sense when the Depth of Field (DoF) that you need is greater than what you can achieve without stopping the lens down so far that sharpness suffers from light diffraction in the lens. It also obviously applies when the DoF you need exceeds what's possible even at the minimum aperture available on the lens.

In practical terms that means focus stacking applies when magnification is very high (e.g. macro) if you want the entire subject to stay sharp because DoF becomes very shallow at high magnification. And it applies to landscape type images when there are image elements you want to keep sharp very close to the camera and others you want to keep sharp very far from the camera. It doesn't really apply to images like the one in this thread where all the image elements are far away as that's pretty easy to cover with sufficient DoF at moderate apertures that don't result in a ton of diffraction based image degradation.

And just for the record, you can focus stack with most cameras as all it really means is several or more images shot of the same scene from a solid support (e.g. tripod) where each image is focused slightly deeper into the frame so when they're all stacked up in post processing the sharp parts of each are combined to give a near to far sharp image. You can take any lens and manually focus each of those images to create the focus stack set, but it takes some time.

Features like Nikon's Focus Shift feature just automates the process so you can quickly capture all the images you need for the focus stack in one automated sequence. It speeds things up a lot which is good for live subjects (e.g live macro subjects) or for landscapes where things can move (e.g the moon in this shot or wind that might come up and move things in your image). But you don't strictly need a camera that supports automatic capture of focus stack sets to do focus stack photography, you just need to take all the images with different focus points and them stack them in post processing software which could include Photoshop though other programs make it easier.
 
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DRwyoming said:
Yes, I just took another look and though I really like that image it is certainly a good candidate for focus stacking.

Basically focus stacking makes sense when the Depth of Field (DoF) that you need is greater than what you can achieve without stopping the lens down so far that sharpness suffers from light diffraction in the lens. It also obviously applies when the DoF you need exceeds what's possible even at the minimum aperture available on the lens.

In practical terms that means focus stacking applies when magnification is very high (e.g. macro) if you want the entire subject to stay sharp because DoF becomes very shallow at high magnification. And it applies to landscape type images when there are image elements you want to keep sharp very close to the camera and others you want to keep sharp very far from the camera. It doesn't really apply to images like the one in this thread where all the image elements are far away as that's pretty easy to cover with sufficient DoF at moderate apertures that don't result in a ton of diffraction based image degradation.

And just for the record, you can focus stack with any camera as all it really means is several or more images shot of the same scene from a solid support (e.g. tripod) where each image is focused slightly deeper into the frame so when they're all stacked up in post processing the sharp parts of each are combined to give a near to far sharp image. You can take any lens and manually focus each of those images to create the focus stack set, but it takes some time.

Features like Nikon's Focus Shift feature just automates the process so you can quickly capture all the images you need for the focus stack in one automated sequence. It speeds things up a lot which is good for live subjects (e.g live macro subjects) or for landscapes where things can move (e.g the moon in this shot or wind that might come up and move things in your image). But you don't strictly need a camera that supports automatic capture of focus stack sets to do focus stack photography, you just need to take all the images with different focus points and them stack them in post processing software which could include Photoshop though other programs make it easier.
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Thank' a lot DR for taking the time to explain this very useful tool I will certainly try with my D500.
 
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