Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Panasonic G5, Tamron 500mm Mirror Lens, Tamron 1.4x Teleconverter, and the Moon … again :-)

I just cannot get enough of trying to get a nice Moon shot … sigh.

Two days ago I shot what I thought might be my best Moon image ever. And it still might. But I like tonight’s efforts as well. Tonight I added the Tamron 1.4x Teleconverter back onto the G5 and mirror lens rig to boost the effective focal length from 1000mm to 1400mm. That’s a pretty darned powerful small telescope in anyone;s book.

I had avoided it the other day because I wanted to see how much detail the mirror lens could resolve on its own. But today I just wanted to see if the extra magnification did the image more harm than good.

Well, I think it is ok …

As a reminder, here is the image from two days ago … I did this in color because ISO was very low and I think it looked very nice.

And here is today’s effort … the ISO is higher because the teleconverter loses one stop of light, making the aperture effectively f/11. That’s a tad slow, although I was still able to shoot at a decent 1/40s.

Contrast is also a tad different, but overall both look beautifully sharp and detailed. Remember that the craters near the terminator are the ones that really stand out. Also remember to click on the images to load the 1000px versions. You may need a second click to expand it in your browser.