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Fun with the Olympus OMD

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
Re: Blood moon

Scott ...

If you set the lens on infinity, I think you'd be within the depth of field.

- Leigh
Nope. Long lenses don't have infinity stops (and they don't have much depth of field, either). They can expand or contract enough with temperature that they have to be allowed to focus beyond infinity. And EVF's unlike OVF's can't let you use your eye's sensitivity to respond only to the bright object in the middle of the otherwise black frame. So as long as some part of the moon was illuminated, the M5's EVF showed a bright blur, and I had to focus by bracketing with movements of about a few tenths mm on the scale. Infinity with the 1.4X extender on seems to be slightly shifted from infinity without it. The final totally eclipsed moon was not much brighter than the (near dawn) sky, and then I could focus by eye, but on an image that was shimmering from atmospheric turbulence and general high ISO noise. Earlier, using focus bracketing, I could get some HR images of the whole moon, a few of which turned out like this:

P9281242crop by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

1/800 at f/8, ISO 200. (about 12 stops brighter)

scott
 

Annna T

Active member
I had no luck with the supermoon, because here the sky showed a thick cloud cover. The moon wasn't viewable anywhere. But this summer I experimented with starphotography and the live composite mode of the E-M5II. It produced great results. Better than my own stacking : mainly because the livecomposite eliminates the noise.

Here are a few taken at the end of August :

First looking north : Polaris

E-M5II, Samyang 7.5 F3.5 Fisheye, 20 sec., 800 ISO, live composite (duration about 1-2 hours)


_20150829_317s
by hhh rrr, sur Flickr
 
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Annna T

Active member
and finally a last one looking to the North West, down to the Rhône Valley and up to the Bernese Alps.

All these were taken from the balconies of a mountain flat.

E-M5II with m.Zuiko 12mm F2.0 shot at F2.8, 20 sec, ISO 800. (live composite for about 1-2 hours)


_20150829_320s
by hhh rrr, sur Flickr
 
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f6cvalkyrie

Well-known member
I spent a good part of last night in the park in our village, enjoying the lunar eclipse ...
E-M1 with Reflex-Nikkor 500/f8 at 2000 ISO and ca 1.5 sec exp time.







C U,
Rafael
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
Re: Blood moon

Thanks scott. Excellent image!

Nope. Please, have a look here: http://www.getdpi.com/forum/sony/56138-a7r-a7r2-why-im-keeping-both.html#post661626, post #35.
Nice, but how did your viewfinder and AF work when the moon was still bright? I think AF would have worked for me on the red moon during totality, but I was getting pretty good at manual focus using live view and 10X magnification by then. I've done this kind of shot with an E-1 and with Leicas in the past. With an optical finder it's straightforward. And the difference between a crisp textured moon and a smoothed impressionistic one is important.

In Jerusalem we had scattered clouds, with frequent space between. But we are so far east that the sun came up 20 minutes after I took the shot which I posted. For astro photography, it was pretty convenient. We could sit comfortably in the living room and watch everything low in the western skies.

scott
 

Leigh

New member
Re: Blood moon

Nope. Long lenses don't have infinity stops (and they don't have much depth of field, either).
They can expand or contract enough with temperature that they have to be allowed to focus beyond infinity.
Thank you for the lesson in lens design, Scott.
I'm well familiar with thermal design issues.

If you'll note, I did not use the phrase "infinity stop".

- Leigh
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
Re: Blood moon

Thank you for the lesson in lens design, Scott.
I'm well familiar with thermal design issues.

If you'll note, I did not use the phrase "infinity stop".

- Leigh
I am sorry that you felt I was talking down to you, but "setting the lens to infinity" was not so easy. My m5vII refused to autofocus on the moon when it was still bright, and the depth of field is not enough to prevent going well out of focus when I left the camera set up outside, switched off, to keep it cold. The focus scale on my 40-150 has an infinity sign that is about 4 mm wide. The best focus was found off center, and the actual setting moved around a bit during the evening. My M-1 does better at AF (the M-5vII may have suffered some moisture damage to its viewfinder), but focus bracketing with magnification improves the results noticeably with it as well.

The sharpest long lens that I have access to is a Leica R 280/4.0 APO (manual focus only), so I tried that tonight, while the moon is still full and "super." I first focused on a building a mile or so away, to determine "infinity." I then bracketed focus on the moon and found a slight additional shift gave the best result:

P9280041i by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

This is from a single frame. The 8-frame HR mode didn't do better, perhaps because the atmosphere introduces jitter in the image during the time it takes to make multiple exposures.

scott
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
Re: Textures

Two summers ago, a team of artist/climbers assembled a play structure out of climbing rope and long bamboo sticks in the middle of the Noguchi sculpture garden of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. As "Big Bambu," it was so successful that it stayed open for over a year, and now half of it (surrounded by a safety fence) seems to have become a permanent addition to the sculptures on exhibit. Here it is contrasted with the 2001-style monolith that marks the underground entrance to the Dead Sea scrolls exhibit.

PA020051 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

scott
 

Craftysnapper

New member
The low afternoon light was loverly this afternoon as it fell on the strawflowers with the background in shade, pretty much straight shots. I'm getting addicted to photographing these little flowers.:)

E-M5 mk2/40-150 plus Sigma close up filter.








 
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