Testing moon shot with Jupiter-21A with stacked TCs

[torbod]

I think I got a very good result with the Jupter-21A with two stacked TCs. One Kenko AF (x1.7) and one KOHBEPTEP K-1 (M42, 2x).
Effective focal length on APS-C 200*1.7*2*1.5=1020mm.
Aperture was set to f/5.6 on the J-21A. Nice and light kombo for super tele, perhaps not fast enough for sports

[David]

That's a heck of a contrast line along the bottom left craters. Nice shot.

What does TC stand for?

[DigiChromeEd]

What does TC stand for?[/quote]

A TC is a TeleConverter.

[enzodm]

For me is excellent. I have to try again my teleconverter.

[Attila]

WOW! Excellent indeed!

[danikatia]

[Orio]

[JohnBee]

Simply superb!

[pat donnelly]

An extraordinary result which defies all I have been told about TCs. The combined and multiplied aberrations should have damaged the image, but you have used processing magic!

Very interested to hear more of your processing technique?

[dsmlogger]

Awesome result!

Probably the best moon shot I've seen till now.

[torbod]

Wow thank you for all great comments. And here was I thinking of not posting due to my low skill level.

The shot was taken quite early in the evening. Sky was still blue.
I find full moon shots less interesting since the craters won't be as visibly dramatical due to lower amount of shadows of the sunlight.

I set the combination on the tripod on my balcony and decided not to stop down so far on the lens to keep shutter speed as short as possible.
ISO was set to 100 to eliminate noise. This combination gave a shutter speed of 1/20s, which is not very good to avoid blurry images from mirror and tripod shake.
I used mirror lock up (which is part of the 2 seconds delay on Sony). To my great surprise, motion blur was very low. Probably due to the very light load on the tripod as compared to the long focal length. I sat on a chair behind the camera and kept my eye close but not against the viewfinder during exposure to avoid light coming in from behind. The tripod was only extended as little as possible to keep it sturdy. I squeezed off the shot as smoothly as possible and removed the finger very gently to avoid camera shake.

PS treatment, nothing magic here I think. The shot was very good to start with.
The shot was taken in RAW and was cropped to the final size.
I started by setting the white level and was picky about preserving highlight information. I desaturated colors to eliminate a very low amount of CA found on the right edge on the moon caused by the TCs.
Then I have darkened (burn tool) the sky just outside the right edge of the moon, that had a small amount of spray light (sensor bleed or some optical abberation?).
Then I sharpened with USM (treshold 3 to avoid grain in smooth parts, radius 1 and level 220). I don't like over sharpened images, but here I thought it looked nice with a little extra boost.
After that I moved the dark level somewhat to darken out the sky more and increase contrast.
Then I selected the moon with magic wand, used some feather and inverted the selection. Had a go with the burn tool to get the sky completely black
Looking at this I see several PS-steps that was made in wrong order, and could be done simpler with a better plan, but it was just a quick 3 minutes fix before bedtime.

The Jupter 21A seems to be very good at infinity shots, low amount of sperical abberations.

/T

[Nordentro]

Very nice indeed

This proves that even simple equipment can make great moon shots!

I made a video a while ago with similar gear. 2 X 2X converters + 500mm mirror on my E-p1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqVRnLgDq-I&feature=channel_video_title

[gorbesz]

m8.....i have seen many moon shots from people. all with superb expensive lenses and they couldnt even get close to your result.

long live the M42 power!!

[exaklaus]

very good!!!
Klaus

[s58y]

Excellent results for a 200mm lens (extended to 680mm at about f/19). This lens must have really great central sharpness that the TCs can take advantage of?

I've done a whole lot worse using lenses with much longer focal lengths.