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All blog post images copyright by Edwardson Tan unless otherwise noted

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Full moon on a pretty clear night

Canon EOS T3i, 1/125", f/10, ISO 100, EF 75-300mm III @300mm

Full moon, no clouds in sight, and excellent visibility across the city. So I couldn't pass up taking a series of shots from 1/60" to 1/250" in 1/3 stop decrements (all at f/10 and ISO 100).

After making the typical enhancements in ACR, the image was further edited in PS. I duplicated the image and applied a soft light blending mode at 100% opacity. This increased the contrast. Created a channel mixer layer and ticked the monochrome box and then chose the green filter. Added a curves adjustment layer and pulled down the darks while maintaining the highlights. This further bumped up the contrast.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Moon Jupiter Aldebaran triad

A star, a gaseous planet and a rocky satellite. Aldebaran is at the lower left of the frame.

Canon EOS T3i, 1/4", f/10, ISO 100, EF 75-300mm III @150mm

Using the adjustment brush in ACR I decreased the exposure on the moon by 4 stops! and increased Jupiter and Aldebaran's by two stops.


1/40", f/10, ISO 100, EF 75-300mm III @300mm
Used the Channel Mixer adjustment on PS, turned it into monochrome and applied the infrared filter.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Moon and Jupiter--fitting in a 100mm (APS-C) field of view

Canon EOS T3i, 1/8", f/10, ISO 100, EF 75-300mm III @100mm
In post processing I used the adjustment brush in ACR to reduce the exposure of the moon by 3 stops. Yes, it was practically all white originally. On the other hand I increased the exposure of Jupiter (via the ACR adjustment brush).

No comet, so I shot the moon

I searched for some half hour from early to late dusk, using a binocular to look for comet Pan-STARRS. Nada. It was a clear day--the first in many days--so I should've seen it. But it could be that it's now way low on the horizon and the buildings and trees were blocking it from view. Or maybe the air and light pollution in the city are just too much. Oh well.

For processing the shot of the waxing crescent I used luminosity masks and selected the Bright Lights and used multiply blending mode (100% opacity) to pull down the highlights. I then duplicated that layer again to further reduce the highlights. I duplicated it one more time but changed the blending mode to overlay (100% opacity) to bring up the contrast in the highlights. I hit CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E to effectively create a flattened image without deleting the various layers. Opened a Channel Mixer adjustment layer, checked the monochrome box, and applied a green filter.

Canon EOS T3i, 1/15", f/10, ISO 100, EF 75-300mm III @300mm, cropped

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Moonset: waxing crescent

Just a couple of days after the new moon. I had just arrived home and quickly grabbed the cam. This was taken late dusk. Because the moon was close to the horizon there's so much more atmosphere and particulates between the cam and the moon, making image sharpness far from being the best (when the moon is at its zenith)

Canon EOS T3i, 1/8", f/10, ISO 100, EF 75-300mm III @300mm

I saw a plane (big commercial airliner) buzzing by and so zoomed out and took a long exposure. Its landing lights were on when I saw it but then midway across the shot they turned them off. Pilots must've detected me shooting them and so quickly went into subdued mode :) If it still isn't obvious, the plane was moving from right to left.

Given how the correct exposure for the moon is less than half a sec, Luna in this shot is way, way overexposed. Of course, I could've taken two shots--a long exposure and a short one in order to get both the streaking airplane lights and a correctly exposed crescent and then combined them in PS. Well, I didn't. Too bad.  

10", f/10, ISO 100, EF 75-300mm III @75mm