the_kai•7d agoProlific Poster

My opinion on tracking the moon through a telephoto lens did a 180 last Wednesday

I spent three years swearing that widefield shots of the moon were the only way to go, then a friend showed me his single frame from a 600mm lens that caught every crater rim and shadow detail. That one image convinced me to dig out my old telephoto and give it a try, and now I can't stop shooting close-ups. Has anyone else had a sudden shift like this where a single photo changed how you approach the moon?

2 comments

2 Comments

nora_park727d ago

Started cropping in tighter on the moon after I saw a photo from a guy on Flickr who used nothing but a 500mm mirror lens and a cheap crop sensor camera. His image had this crisp detail on the terminator line where the shadows really popped, and I realized I had been wasting my time trying to fit the whole disk in the frame when I could isolate sections instead. So I dug out an old Sigma 150-600 I had sitting in a closet and tried the same thing, and now I basically only shoot the moon in chunks. That single frame made me stop chasing the "big moon in the landscape" look and start focusing on the texture of the surface itself. It's like I finally saw what was actually there instead of just the shape of the thing. Now I spend hours just panning across different craters and ridges.

the_charlie7d ago

That "every crater rim" part hit different after I saw a nebula shot that made me rethink all my deep sky gear.