Well.... it SHOULD have been a perfect night for shooting the moon - but unfortunately I guess it's just not in the cards for tonight. In my opinion the hardest part of shooting the moon at this telephoto distance is the focus. Getting the focus to show those craters razor sharp takes a lot of fine tuning and wasted card space from "test shots" to zoom in on and see the clarity.
This is where I thank technology. I was using the fabulous "live view" of my 40D and thankfully decided to throw in the cards a bit early tonight. I took 7 shots before I thought about the atmosphere. When I zoomed in 5x on the live view mode, I could clearly see the heat/atmosphere/whatever making very large and nasty waves (like heat on the highway) all over the moon... this picture is my prime example of this...
On the "butt" of the moon (crater at the bottom of this picture with lines shooting in all directions - like the center of a spiderweb) has a line horizontally all the way through the picture - this is how badly distorted the atmosphere was making the focus tonight. If I got one crater in focus near the top - the bottom was nasty as could be and vice versa...
Oh well - at least the 40D's live view saved me from wasting another hour of my life trying to get it right... just have to wait for it to cool down I guess. That's probably why all the pictures I took in -10 degree weather last December/January were so clear and crisp. *grins*
Or maybe I'm just losing my touch :(
This is where I thank technology. I was using the fabulous "live view" of my 40D and thankfully decided to throw in the cards a bit early tonight. I took 7 shots before I thought about the atmosphere. When I zoomed in 5x on the live view mode, I could clearly see the heat/atmosphere/whatever making very large and nasty waves (like heat on the highway) all over the moon... this picture is my prime example of this...
On the "butt" of the moon (crater at the bottom of this picture with lines shooting in all directions - like the center of a spiderweb) has a line horizontally all the way through the picture - this is how badly distorted the atmosphere was making the focus tonight. If I got one crater in focus near the top - the bottom was nasty as could be and vice versa...
Oh well - at least the 40D's live view saved me from wasting another hour of my life trying to get it right... just have to wait for it to cool down I guess. That's probably why all the pictures I took in -10 degree weather last December/January were so clear and crisp. *grins*
Or maybe I'm just losing my touch :(
Well.... it SHOULD have been a perfect night for shooting the moon - but unfortunately I guess it's just not in the cards for tonight. In my opinion the hardest part of shooting the moon at this telephoto distance is the focus. Getting the focus to show those craters razor sharp takes a lot of fine tuning and wasted card space from "test shots" to zoom in on and see the clarity.
This is where I thank technology. I was using the fabulous "live view" of my 40D and thankfully decided to throw in the cards a bit early tonight. I took 7 shots before I thought about the atmosphere. When I zoomed in 5x on the live view mode, I could clearly see the heat/atmosphere/whatever making very large and nasty waves (like heat on the highway) all over the moon... this picture is my prime example of this...
On the "butt" of the moon (crater at the bottom of this picture with lines shooting in all directions - like the center of a spiderweb) has a line horizontally all the way through the picture - this is how badly distorted the atmosphere was making the focus tonight. If I got one crater in focus near the top - the bottom was nasty as could be and vice versa...
Oh well - at least the 40D's live view saved me from wasting another hour of my life trying to get it right... just have to wait for it to cool down I guess. That's probably why all the pictures I took in -10 degree weather last December/January were so clear and crisp. *grins*
Or maybe I'm just losing my touch :(
This is where I thank technology. I was using the fabulous "live view" of my 40D and thankfully decided to throw in the cards a bit early tonight. I took 7 shots before I thought about the atmosphere. When I zoomed in 5x on the live view mode, I could clearly see the heat/atmosphere/whatever making very large and nasty waves (like heat on the highway) all over the moon... this picture is my prime example of this...
On the "butt" of the moon (crater at the bottom of this picture with lines shooting in all directions - like the center of a spiderweb) has a line horizontally all the way through the picture - this is how badly distorted the atmosphere was making the focus tonight. If I got one crater in focus near the top - the bottom was nasty as could be and vice versa...
Oh well - at least the 40D's live view saved me from wasting another hour of my life trying to get it right... just have to wait for it to cool down I guess. That's probably why all the pictures I took in -10 degree weather last December/January were so clear and crisp. *grins*
Or maybe I'm just losing my touch :(