The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This is my first attempt at photographing the moon.
Specific Feedback
Is it sharp? Too much contract? Too little? Any suggestions to do better?
Technical Details
I took 10 images an aligned them in photoshop, made them smart objects and then took a mean of the stack. Not sure that really added anything. The result I ran through Topaz Photo AI and sharpened. Also used a couple of filters in NIK to get contrast and detail.
Critique Template
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Very nice, especially for a first try! The exposure looks right on and it looks like focus/sharpness is good. The overall tonal balance is very good, with detail in whites and the seas not too dark.
I think you may be overthinking the processing, though. (It always helps critique to know the equipment.) The multiple exposures and stacking is a way to reduce noise, but the moon is moving fast enough in the frame at a reasonable telephoto setting (you don’t say if this is a crop, or what the sensor size is) that there will be slight movement even at 20-30 frames per second. I have found it better to just use one exposure at the sweet spot aperture and a reasonably fast shutter speed and do good noise reduction. (There are amazing ways to do that now.)
It’s hard to tell at the size posted here but it does appear oversharpened. I like the gentle tonal corrections you can get in LR – a careful dose of Clarity is usually enough if you have the sliders above set for good exposure and contrast. (The Contrast slider is a blunt instrument – Clarity is more sophisticated midtone contrast.)
Forget so-called sharpening, beyond a pixel level. It just introduces artifacts (edge contrast) to make things appear sharp. But if you ever try to engarge, you will see the artifacts.
The best way to get sharp pictures of the moon is to shoot on a very clear calm night with clean air, with the moon high overhead so you are not shooting through a lot of dirty turbulent atmosphere. It looks like you did that here. Very nice first try! I’d love to see what you think of a reprocess of just a single frame.
@Diane_Miller Thank you - I will reprocess a single frame. The sensor size is 8256x5504 - so a definite crop! And definitely not at the sweet spot of the lens!
If I get good conditions in the next couple of nights I might try again and select a better aperture.
Yes, I think it’s better. There is a lot of detail in the craters on the left edge and a compromise could be to do a very subtle “sharpening” and mask it off along the left edge. There are several options for sharpening on areas like the seas – in LR, Clarity or Texture, and in PS I like the Nik CEP options for Pro Contrast and Tonal Contrast. I don’t have a recipe – I just experiment ad hoc.
@Diane_Miller I posted another update. I tried to implement your suggestion of masking the lower left corner and using NIK Pro Contrast to even out the details a bit. Thoughts? Thanks
