Not so much cloud tonight, pretty good conditions to shoot the moon...

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueskyxiii/6145340144/[/url

Thats a proper good shot of the moon.

What would be the minimum requirement lense to get a good clear shot of the moon?

Cheers





Not sure I can answer that, others may be able to provide more useful answers.

The shot above was taken with a 200mm lens with a 1.7x teleconverter and a 2x teleconverter giving a total of 680mm. I have taken reasonable shots at both 200mm and 340mm respectively but obviously the moon appears smaller in the image, though you can still capture some detail.
Most of the people I exchange views with on Flickr are using scopes and they get better results.

That is a stonking picture.... my 11 yr old son has asked me to print it out so he can stick on one his school books...hope your ok with that, where do I send the £100000 fee for ripping off your pic ha ha

Hi all I have had a Nikon D40 for about 3 years and am looking to upgrade. There are so many options out there, I have done some research but the more I read the more undecided I am. I mainly use for sports, but want to do some portraits etc.. any suggestions? I like the feel and weight of my Nikon, so would be more than happy to stay with the brand. Budget of around £700.

That's a difficult budget band for a Nikon body. (I'm assuming body only cos you'll no doubt have lenses already for your D40.

It's not enough for a pro-am body like a D300s (circa £1K) but less than £700 only buys bodies which aren't massive upgrades from your D40.

Does seem like that amount falls between ranges.

If you are leaning towards staying with Nikon it may be worth trying to PM Ginger Jon. At some point in the past I think he upgraded from a D40 to a D90 - he may be able to offer you some advice.

Also I believe vbfg has moved through the Nikon range as well.

Like LBWR I am not sure that anything less than £700 will get you much of an upgrade however I suppose the considerations would be perhaps the D90, D7000 or D300s.

Ginger Jon or vbfg may be able to offer useful advice about the D90 and what this offers over the D40, otherwise you may be looking at one of the other two models or perhaps a second hand body.

Nice shot. I would only add first, try quarter moons and anything but a nearly full moon, much more interesting due to shadows; a really good steady tripod is also a must - especially the longer the lens. Finally, did you know that a black cat in sunlight is approx 20,000 X brighter than a full moon?

Thanking you.

I do shoot other phases of the moon from time to time and you're spot on that they are more interesting. I only got the camera out for this one because the sudden appearance of fur on the back of my hands suggested the time was right - unfortunately the weather wasn't and I was a day late.

My kit is of mixed quality. The 200mm lens and 1.7x teleconverter are both top notch pieces of kit and I can get pretty much the same detail with just these two shooting at 340mm - just a smaller image of the moon. The addition of a further (dirt cheap) 2x teleconverter gives me a bigger image but with little improvement in the quality. Can't justify buying a higher quality 2x teleconverter so this combination will have to do.

Spot on regarding the tripod, sound advice.

As regards the last fact, I will take your word for that.

Oh, not me, but the genius that is astronomer Bob Berman. He did an article recently about albedo, which is on a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 being zero reflectivity and 1 pure white. Fresh snow is 0.9, the planet Venus about 0.7. Anyway, it turns out the albedo of the Moon from Earth is only about 0.08, which is about the same as black paint.

The brightest streaks on your image are about the same "brightness" as wet soil in daylight!

I did indeed, although it was the oft-forgotten D40X I made the leap from.

The step-up isn't huge - the D90 still has most of the fall-back modes you expect from an entry camera but it's well-built and responds nice and quick, and can fire off a decent number of frames per second. Quality in RAW is excellent and in jpg pretty impressive. I don't know how it compares to newer entry price cameras but compared to the D40(X) it has more AF options and is faster to find focus - you can also use it to control slave flashes, which I don't think you can on entry level cameras. You can find it body only for about £500.