Supermoon

Two different results - 24 hours apart.  Both shots with a sigma 150-500 zoom on a Canon EOS 7D.  Autofocus was on - but error correction off.

The first was taken with the following settings about 6 hours before the event.  The settings used were:  500mm, 1/40sec, f/22, ISO100, single frame.  The rationale was to trade off slight drift with maximum depth of view (probably not sufficient reasons to get the best shot).

The second shot was taken with the following settings about 18 hours after the event.  The settings used were:  500mm, 1/160sec, f/10, ISO100, single frame.  The rational was to avoid any drift while risking some areas (edge) loosing focus (although the distance to the moon makes that a suspect justification - more distortion is likely in not centering the moon in the view finder).  Already, some shadowing is apparent at the very top of the moon.  

Neither of these shots produce the sort of detail available by either taking hd video and using image stacking software (eg Registax) to average or using a large telescope to take multiple shots of the surface and then stitching them together.  

I took video of the moon at both shoots.  The videos show constant atmospheric distortion over the entire surface.  

To my eye, the second shot is the better of the two.  All my shots are taken in 5184 * 3456 pixel format and are reduced to (about) 640 pixels width for inclusion on the web (this makes my pictures fast to download, and at the ordinary size available to G+ users).  In this case, the second original contained far more unique detail - which carries through, to a degree, to the final JPEG version above.

Peter Quinton

Palerang

August 2014