February's full moon

As a child the moon always amazed me and while growing up the idea of space exploration was one of the things that inspired me to pursue science. Later in life my love for the moon grew after I began to read a lot about Astrology and learned that as a Cancerian, I was ruled by this planet. Once I purchased an EM5 one of my first goals was to photograph the moon but I did not get a chance to experiment with this venture until I was offshore last Fall. At first I had absolutely no idea what kind of settings I should use and figured because it was night I needed a slow shutter speed. Boy was I wrong. LOL. As a scientist I am a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I did not fully realize that the full moon is a very powerful light source. After bumping up my shutter speed I got some OK photos of the moon and at that point was just excited that I actually got a photo!! Turns out I was still in using "auto iso" (which I have basically abandoned and set manually now) and really, at a value of 3200, the photos I took that day were trash. After a lot of trial and error I have come up with some "optimal" settings that I usually use when trying to capture the moon using my Oly MZD 40-150mm lens @ 150mm. These are iso-as low as you can go (in my case 200); aperture- 5.6-8 (no "smaller" than 8 with m4/3 because you sacrifice sharpness from diffraction), and a shutter speed ranging 1/2*effective focal length (here, 600) to 2000. Settings for the photo I will use for this post processing example included: iso-200, aperture-f/6.7, shutter speed-1/1000. The goal of this post is to share some of the post processing tricks I have learned from my attempts at capturing the moon.

Original file

The above photo is a screen grab of the RAW file and as you can see, the moon is actually pretty small. I wish I had a longer lens, but I have found the 40-150 to be sharp enough to allow for some pretty significant cropping. 

Crop

This is actually my first step in processing and I try to get close to a 1:1 view or 400x400 to 600x600 pixels. As you can see this alters the histogram which will help later on when altering brightness etc..

100% crop of RAW (600x600 pixels)

Looking at the above photo, you can tell that the EM5's sensor actually picks up an amazing amount of data. It is just a matter of maximizing the information.

Contrast -100

Next comes what I think is the most important step and something that I have only recently found made a huge difference in the output of my moon photos. This is to adjust the contrast to -100. You would think that increasing the contrast would lead to a more sharper looking image, but the renderings with no contrast look a lot better (of course this is subjective).

Adjust highlights, shadows, whites, blacks and clarity

After I set my contrast to -100 I adjust my dynamic range parameters and clarity to maximize the moon's detail and try to ensure that all the surrounding pixels are black. I am all for a dramatic photo, but by all means adjust for a more natural look if that is what you are looking for. If you look at the histogram in the top right, you can see a fairly good distribution of tones, albeit slight overexposed.

Sharpness

Noise Reduction

Next, I adjust sharpness and noise reduction under Lightroom's "Details" module. Here it is important that you apply a mask to sharpening and to view the very fine changes that result from adjustments to noise reduction at a 2:1 or 3:1 magnification. I am a "tweak until it looks good" kind of person and there is really no right or wrong recipe here. 

Split tone

This next step is just something that I found adds a nice touch to moon photos, but is just a personal preference and again, is adjustable as you see fit. Here I go to the "Split Toning" module and warm up the highlights using a 50:25 mix (goldish color at 25% saturation) and slightly cool down the shadows using a 215:10 mix (slate/light blue at 10% saturation). The difference is subtle but I think it breathes some life into an otherwise very dull (grey) subject.

Adjustment brush

One of the final edits I made to this particular moon photo was to accentuate its large crater by increasing the clarity and contrast of that area. This helps draw the eye to what I think is a pretty interesting focal point.

Crop to taste

Before final tweaking I choose an aspect ratio and crop the photo to the dimensions I want. Due to the severe crop I do not think that this would be a very good candidate to make a large print from, but for web display (and as a background photo for my desktop-haha), I find that a relatively short telephoto (300mm) will give you pretty good results if you are willing to massage out the details in post.

Final tweaking

Finally, I go back to the "dynamic range" adjusters and use the sliders to fine tune my final image. Again, this is up to personal taste. Photographing the moon may seem daunting and it certainly took some time for me to get it right, but it is something everyone should try!! If you have yet to do so I hope this post has given you some inspiration to give it a try and some tips for post processing after. Also, even if you don't think you have a long enough lens, you may be pleasantly surprised at what you can accomplish with a 200-300mm telephoto. As per usual, thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this small post processing session =)

Sam D.

p.s. March's full moon is scheduled for the 16th =)

My last post mentioned some experimentation with nighttime photography and I wanted to highlight some of the resultant photos here. I am offshore, but not technically working yet so I was able to spend a few nights outside attempting to showcase (as a Cancerian, my favorite) the moon. Traditionally astrophotographers avoid the moon like the plague because its intensity drowns out the light coming from stars, but I figured I could use the full moon's output to my advantage. Unfortunately, during the first two nights that I went out to shoot the seas were very rough and it was hard to come up with a decent photo... not that that stopped me from trying ;)

"Torrential" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 4 sec, iso200

"Moonset" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 4 sec, iso200

"Diagonal" 45mm, f/1.8, 1/10, iso200

The third night however, was a charm. Winds were down, the sea was calm and the Viking I was bathed in moonlight. This allowed me to really push the envelope when it came to exposure time.

"Just right" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 12 sec, iso200

"Stars" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 7 sec, iso200

"Swimming" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 7.2 sec, iso200

Overall conditions for long exposure photography on a boat are not ideal. Not only is the vessel moving up and down due to wave action, you are also usually traveling in a particular direction. On top of that, I have no tripod so I had to rely on the boat itself to stabilize my camera. This turned out to be an obstacle in itself because the giant mechanics working on the inside of the boat cause tons of vibrations. In the photos below however, I utilized the lighting from the boat to "help".

"VS492" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 1 sec, iso400 

"Helideck" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 6 sec, iso200

"F" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 6 sec iso200

By the time I took the photo above, I could see the horizon opposite the moon start to brighten with daylight. The following photos are what I took as the sun was rising.

"Concave" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 1 sec, iso200

"Seafaring" 7.5mm, f/3.5, 0.5 sec, iso200

"Dave" 45mm, f/1.8, 1/60, iso200

Of course, most of the photos in this series were taken with the 7.5mm third party fisheye that I have been raving about (see here, here, or here) because I have really taken a liking to it. I also used the 40-150mm kit zoom for the first "close up" moon shot and 45mm MZD portrait lens a bit. I came into the habit of using the live bulb mode on my EM5 to get a "feel" for how long my shutter speed should be and then setting my camera accordingly (usually a second under) for the shot to get a rounded exposure value (ie. 6 instead of 6.8) but this was not done in all instances. Hope you enjoyed at least one of the photos in this set =) It was challenging, and definitely out of my comfort zone but that's what photography is about right!? Until next time!

Sam D.

On Christmas eve my partner and I had the pleasure of visiting the Spectacle of Dancing Lights showcase at Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park. It was an awesome experience, and one of the only places in FL where it snows! Albeit fake, it was cold enough that evening that it felt real... perfect for putting us in the Christmas spirit :D It was also a cool opportunity to use the 7.5mm fisheye that the two posts before this have showcased. I plan on posting more photos from our vacation, but I felt "The Spectacle" would be a good way to end this small three part series on the lens. It was hard to concentrate on taking these because I was a bit overwhelmed by how awesome 6 million lights look. I could have composed my shots better, but oh well, I guess I was having too much fun. Hope you enjoy them anyhow. I also took a video, but I am back offshore and posting it would be a bit much for the server out here.

  

For more on this third party fisheye:

Part I: Little Havana

Part II: Universal Studios

I love to vent my creativity onto my partners drag persona, and the "want" to document our efforts using photography was one of the reasons I began researching this medium in the first place. Before I got the MZD 45mm f/1.8 I was using a legacy 50mm f/1.8 which was originally developed for use with the OM film camera line. They are cheap and effective when photographing still life, but it was extremely hard for me to use the manual focus on a moving subject. Also, it is not exactly the sharpest lens wide open and the low light levels that you tend to deal within bars made it hard to stop down. Here are some of what I accomplished with this lens:

In short, they are soft, and the solution was Olympus' digital portrait lens. In combination with the EM5, it is fast to autofocus even in a dimly lit bar and sharp wide open, and the 90mm focal length make it an awesome lens to photograph drag. Being able to shoot wide open allows for faster shutter speeds, subject isolation and lower iso levels, all of which are good things when you are trying to photograph someone do the splits etc...

Not only is this lens good for capturing fast moving performers, it just does good in low light period. Here are some examples of shots that I have taken in the bar environment. It is interesting to shoot in places like bars and other entertainment venues because there is often crazy lighting schemes with multiple colors etc... this makes it really really difficult to post process with natural skin tones in mind. However, it is also this crazy lighting that makes for interesting photogaphs and if you are still not happy with results there is always the option to convert to monochrome.

There were times when I wish I had a wider lens, but in reality, 45mm is perfect because I could usually back away to make up for the difference. I could have also used a longer lens in some instances and Olympus' 75mm portrait lens would have yielded some amazing photos I am sure, but this lens is a lot less versatile. In addition, camera shake would be magnified at 150mm and keeping the subject in frame would probably be much more difficult. I am also going to guess that the 25mm prime Olympus just released would do wonders in this department. If you are not a fan of or "scared" of drag, the take home message here is that the 45mm portrait lens is great if you want to capture moving subjects in a dimly lit environment... for instance, at a concert or theatre. But of course, all this has been established for this lens, and there is no doubt that it is highly capable. My goal here was to provide some sample photos and show how I have put this lens to use in a bar setting =) 

Sam D. 

If you live in, or are traveling to Florida and would like to schedule a photo-shoot, I am currently offering portrait services in and around Central Fl. Check out more of my work at www.samgoldphotography.com