Upde Designs

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my beautiful little girl.  I hope you have a wonderful day Sweetheart.   28 years ago today our lives changed  dramatically for the better when she was born.  I will never forget that amazing day.  Angie you have been a delight.  I have truly been blessed with my best friend and life partner, two wonderful children, two beautiful grand children, and an amazing son-in-law.

Yesterday I showed you this image of the moon in a cloudy sky.  This is pretty much what I saw on Friday morning of last week.  When I first saw the moon the cloud formation was actually more dramatic than it was here.  But by the time I got the tripod set up and the camera configured this is what I was presented with.  The human eye can detect and interpret around 8-9 levels of luminance without much trouble.  In other words, we can see shadows, mid-tones, and highlights and still see detail in each.  A digital camera cannot do this on its own.  It can only capture up to 5 levels of luminance depending on the quality of the sensor.

So to capture these wonderful clouds in a dark sky the shutter needs to stay open for a longer period of time.  It did a great job of capturing the clouds but all the detail (highlights) of the moon are blown out.  It has gone to pure white and there is no detail in pure white.

The solution is to take a second image from the same spot with a faster shutter speed.  Nothing else in the camera changes just the amount of time the sensor is exposed to the ambient light.  As you can see the shadows have gone to pure black.  There are no clouds visible, no stars , nothing but the moon.  It however is now rendering detail.  I took these two images a few seconds apart.

Once the RAW images are processed it is now a matter of taking both images into Photoshop and blending the two images into one composite image of the sky I actually saw.    So if you’ve taken a picture of a beautiful full moon and all you ended up with is a big white blob, now you understand why.  The camera will meter as best it can the ambient light in the scene and expose for the best possible picture.  The limitations of the sensor will determine the level of detail you come away with.

That’s it for today.  Hope you enjoy your Tuesday.  Happy Birthday again Sweetheart.  See you this evening.  Thanks for stopping by the blog and be careful.