Another version of the half Moon from February 2008, emphasizing stronger color and edge-definition.

This photo was made with 11 bracketed exposures from a Canon EOS 1D Mark III DSLR camera attached to a 127mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope. The equivalent optical focal length for this setup is 1997mm, which allows the Moon to very nearly fill the frame. The Av is fixed at f/12.1, and the Tv was fixed at 1/160. To bracket exposures, the ISO on the DSLR was changed from 125 to 1250. At ISO 1250, a just slightly under full exposure was obtained.

Each of the 11 photos was processed from camera raw into 16-bit TIFF with ACR. The (11) 16-bit TIFF files were automatically aligned and then composited with Photomatix, with adjustments to yield the widest histogram at output. The composited image was also a 16-bit TIFF file, which was then processed in LightZone to emphasize numerous facets obtainable from the composited photo, namely stronger color and better edges, so that the lunar landscape would be more distinct in this view. After processing in LightZone, the photo was then processed in Noise Ninja, to greatly reduce dark tone noise, and to greatly reduce any chroma noise left-over from compositing.

There are some flaws in this composite, but I really liked the color and distinction. Some quick notes on little problems follows.

The orientation and alignment of the Moon as for each photo was reasonably careful, but not exact. At 1997mm, the Moon moves quickly in the frame, so the camera's Live View feature was used to sequence when to grab the photo at approximately the same place. The telescope mount was reasonably solid, and was further counter-weighted with a 25-LB sandbag for stability. The ability of Photomatix to align 11 disparate pictures of this type is rather stellar ... however, the residual though small alignment errors result in color fringing at the edges. In very high resolution, this effect is much less discernible. There is still some digital noise in the individual photos, though Noise Ninja did a wonderful job cleaning up the composite. It might be useful to try noise reduction on each photo individually, immediately after the demosaicing processing done in ACR, the assemble the composite from the denoised and bracketed source photos ... but that is more work for sure.

Since this photo is intended to be stock, the view of the Moon would likely be smaller than the full size of a composition it would be used it, which would nullify these flaws even more. The relatively high resolution however allows a greater range of fit to compositions.