Thursday, March 29, 2018

I just photographed the moon at 1100mm

My wife and I were walking the dog around the block late in the afternoon yesterday and I saw that the moon was out and looking pretty nice. I said to my wife "I wonder if I could put a 1.4x teleconverter onto the Canon 200-400mm lens (which already has it's own 1.4x tele converter built in) and photograph the moon really close up." At which point she responded with "I have no idea what the heck you are talking about." I tried to explain it to her, but instead, got home and gave it a try.



Knowing that there are certain lenses that will not work with a teleconverter, I was pleasantly surprised that the 1.4x teleconverter mounted onto the 200-400mm lens. I determined that with both teleconverters on at the same time, the lens would be at 784mm with a minimum aperture of f/8. I put on the Canon 5D Mark IV camera to take advantage of the 30 megapixels. I mounted all this on my Gitzo tripod and the Acratech ball head. And yes, I did get a lot of interesting looks from my neighbors as they walked by. Look at this beast!


I never get tired of looking at the moon like this.


It is so awesome to be able to see the craters and different characteristics of the terrain.

After taking this photo, I decided to try the same setup but this time with the Canon 7D Mark II camera. This camera has a crop sensor, which basically adds another 1.4x to the equation. Now I was shooting with a total of 1097mm. As I was taking some photos, I noticed how fast the moon was moving through the frame of the camera. I then switched to video mode.


Click on the image above to head over to YouTube to see the video for yourself.

This will show you why it is impossible to take a photo of the moon with a really long shutter speed. If you were to try capturing a photo of the moon (using any long zoom lens) with anything more than a one second exposure, the moon would be blurred for sure.

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3 comments:

  1. Awesome photos. I have the EF 2x III. Will that work on the sames lens. What settings did you end up with?

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  2. Nice!

    I've been trying to do the same since I got my Fuji 100-400 a couple of month ago. In my case, I can use a 2x teleconverter and the X-T2 also has a 1.5x crop factor.

    Sadly, I live in UK and I can't remember when was the last time that I saw the moon. Much less a full (or close to) moon.

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  3. I think it is 1.6x crop in the 7d :)

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