3 Replies to “Under The Blood Moon”

  1. I realize I am seeing a downsized image, but on my computer it looks like the 1/2 second exposure added a little motion blur. Adding a little clarity and sharpening in Lightroom would probably get you the detail back that was lost due to the shutter speed. If you add sharpening you will also have to hold down option on a Mac or alt on a PC and add masking so that the sky is not sharpened along with the moon.

    I hope you will take this as purely constructive suggestion only on this particular shot. The overall quality of your images is excellent and it may only be because of the downsizing of the image that it looks a little soft.

    1. There are 3 factors to what you are seeing. 1) high altitude cloud cover. 2) higher ISO because the effective aperture on the spotting scope is f/12 3) slight motion blur due to rotation of the Earth.
      I want to be careful with over sharpening of images as that ads its own flavor to the image that detracts from the aesthetic. Also, I cannot sharpen the cloud cover out of the image. Trying to do so would ruin the image and lose the soft luminance it gives.

  2. I agree that over sharpening would be the worst thing you could do. If you sharpened the sky in addition to the moon it would make the image worse with the higher ISO. I was suggesting very minimal changes. It may be that your original file looks better without those changes.

    As you know photography is a matter of personal taste. You have to do what works best for the image as you see it. It was the slight motion blur that I thought might be corrected by very slight adjustments to clarity and sharpening. I have experienced that same earth rotational effect when I had to use slower shutter speeds while photographing the moon. That is what I thought might be helped by some minor corrections. As you said, you can’t correct for the high clouds. It is still a very good image given the limitations of the cloud cover.

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