Shooting Moon with the Pentax Q and a F*300/4.5 K-mount Lens

Here is the result (from direct JPEG out of the Q, no major re-touching but just only resizing along with light sharpening):



( Click to Enlarge - All Rights Reserved: RiceHigh (c)2013 )

And the combo of my gear that used:



Indeed, there are quite some advantages of using the Q in shooting this type of photos, namely:

1. No mirror slap and even no shutter shock of any during the course of shooting, as electronic shutter is solely used;

2. Large magnification with higher pixel count and not much cropping is needed. The above is with effective focal length of 1680mm in 135, i.e., 300mm x 5.6;

3. Live View mode with focus peaking is especially useful for critical focusing with highest focusing accuracy that is required.

And, some techniques of mine:

1. Use spot metering and M mode, trying to expose to the Right as far as possible but avoid any highlight clipping. (As for the White Balance, AWB is just fine and will do the job);

2. Use IR remote controller to trigger the shutter (no Q camera supports the cable release) and take the shot to avoid any vibration at that very high magnification. Actually, some oscillations could be seen if the shutter release button is pressed directly;

3. Use MF focus peaking in 2X or 4X to achieve even more accurate focusing. Choose the right magnification can help even better centering of the moon. In my case, I chose 2X, as shown below:



4. Do not use very high ISO of the Q as details will lose significantly and dynamic range will be more limited. I chose ISO 250 for the best compromise of a higher shutter speed but not too high an ISO speed;

5. Stop down the lens for sharper result. The above exposure combination is f/8 and 1/125s at ISO 250, i.e, one stop faster than base ISO.

Last but not least, a very high quality K-mount prime lens like my F*300/4.5 is required. Otherwise, all those optical imperfection will appear (as they are greatly magnified with the 5.6X crop factor) before anything is recorded! :-o


Related:

The Unbalanced Q - Part 2.5: Photo Samples

The Unbalanced Q - Part 2 (with a K-mount Lens)

Total Lunar Eclipse (2011-12-10, at Hong Kong)