Moon with Camera with So-called "one-inch" Sensor (Hand-held) VIII

This was the first file converted from raw (using Panasonic'sproprietary raw converter), and then further processed in Layers,Levels, etc. in Photoshop. I was not striving for realism on thistreatment, to say the least. This is the eighth day of what wasintended to be a seven-day project.

 

--Lannie

Your clear image. What was the focal length of the lens and the exposure time?

 

Jim Phelps

Jim, that little camera has a zoom with an effective focal range of 25-400mm.  It was at full extension, 400mm.  (The true focal length of that built-in lens at full extension is 146mm.)

 

The exposure data were as follows:

ISO 125

f/8

Shutter 1/200 sec

Exposure bias (compensation) was 4.6666, not my usual setting--but I do shoot with a lot of variations on exposure compensation compared to many people.

 

I tried a lot of exposure combos and did a lot of shots, since handheld can be dicey, especially on an object that is nearly overhead, as the moon was.  So I shot a lot.  My old hands and arms shook a lot in that position, so I had to take a lot to be sure something came out sharp.  That is not typical in most situations, but shooting almost straight up was hard to get right.  I have not tried it with a tripod.  I still have yet to get "shooting the moon" hand-held down to a science.  In ordinary situations, shooting at an effective focal length of 400mm presents no real difficulties.  The image stabilization is quite effective.  For the record, I am not thrilled with the JPEGs, and the Panasonic software is slow for raw conversions.  If I had CS6, I could do raw conversions with ACR in Photoshop.

 

This was the first shot that I processed from raw, since it took me a while to find out how Panasonic's raw converter works.  (I can't get the raw files to open with Adobe Camera Raw even with Lightroom 6, even with updates.)

 

Processing was done on CS5.1.

 

For what it's worth, I got the "little" camera (it isn't tiny) as an open-box special on eBay for about $200 below market value not much over a month ago.  I got it after I saw some hummingbird shots on Photo.net with effective focal lengths of 600mm on a Panasonic with an even smaller sensor.  They were very good, but I had no interest going even smaller with the sensor.  Even so-called "one-inch" is smaller than I like, since noise increases quickly as ISO is turned up.

 

The only really bad thing about it from my perspective is that it will not stop down below f/8.  There are work-arounds for most situations.

 

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure. . . .

 

--Lannie

This shot was obviously over-processed.  All of the ones in this series were to some extent.

 

--Lannie

Thanks for the explanation. I know the old arms (and old legs) problem very well from first hand experience.

Best,

Jim Phelps

Thanks, Jim.  I am quite sure that the image stabilization in the camera is the real reason that I am getting these in focus (most of the time).

 

--Lannie

The exposure bias/compensation should, of course, have a minus sign in front of it:

 

-4.666666

 

The moon is bright!  It is in direct sunlight.  One would not want to shoot it any brighter than it is.

 

Most shots made in this sequence (in this folder) were made with an exposure bias of -2 to -3.

 

--Lannie