Luca Vanzella
Moon and Sun at the Same Time
Since Flickr doesn't do full screen well, click here to view in high resolution and zoom in as desired.
One of the holy grails of skyscape photography that I have occasionally tried is to capture both the Full Moon and the Sun in the same shot. Obviously, both the Moon and the Sun need to be above the horizon at the same time. When the Moon is full, it is also very far away from the Sun and so a very wide image is needed. And to make it a skyscape, the two objects should be at similar altitudes, not very high in the sky, so that a foreground can be included.
One of the methods I have used to achieve this shot is to shoot the Full Moon rising or setting above buildings that reflect the Sun. While not quite the holy grail, at least the photons from the Moon and Sun arrive at the camera's sensor for the same image. This example from 2014 03 17 is a single exposure with a relatively narrow field. This example from 2013 10 17 is a stitched panorama of a wider field. In both cases, the Sun is reflected.
But what about getting both objects in the sky at once? Well, as I was scoping photo opps for the Full Moon of June 2, 2015 I noticed that on May 31 at 20:45, the 97% illuminated Moon and the Sun would both be at about the same altitude (7.5 deg). Since the Moon would be not quite full, it would "only" be about 170 deg away from the Sun - a pretty wide shot indeed. The relatively low altitude of both objects meant that a skyscape might be possible. A friend of mine has rooftop access on a downtown apartment building and so when the skies looked to cooperate, a plan was hatched.
I set up my tripod on the rooftop and leveled it using the on board, circular bubble level. I figured this would let me shoot a series of overlapping images with a horizontal horizon. This proved much more difficult than it looked. No matter how accurately I tried to level the tripod, when I panned the camera through 170 deg, the horizon did not remain horizontal.
At the appointed time, I shot a series of 18 images from the Moon to the Sun. It took about 7 seconds to frame each successive image, so the whole series took about 2 minutes. Unlike Moon rises and sets, when I normally shoot in Manual mode, I put my Canon T3i camera on Automatic and let it decide on the best exposure for each frame. I set the ISO to 100, knowing that the final frame would have the Sun it, so this would permit a shutter speed in the camera's range. Since this was a daytime sequence, I used a Sunny white balance. I shot the images at 75mm focal length to keep the Moon a reasonable size.
When it came time to make the panorama, the stitching software that I normally use had a difficult time. It appeared that I did not overlap the images enough, which is important for image matching by stitching software. I started with the free Hugin Panorama Stitcher which normally produces seamless pans with very good brightness and contrast matching and with HDR capabilities. However, Hugin could not create a smooth panorama and kept cutting off the Sun on the extreme right side.
Consulting the forums, I came across AutoStitch - another free software that had good reviews. However,this program also had problems and could not produce a seamless panorama.
A lot of time had been spent on this without success, so I put the project on the back burner. It was when I was looking at a great, new app called Microsoft Hyperlapse, that I came across another app from Microsoft Research called Image Composite Editor (ICE). Seeing it was free, I decided to give it a whirl. With the default settings, ICE produced a smooth panorama but still had some trouble with the last couple of frames that included the Sun and its glow. Since the horizon was not horizontal, ICE created a crop that did not include the Sun. I tried various settings with little improvement, when I hit on an idea. I created one pano using the left 9 images and a second pano using the right 9 images - so far so good. I then created the final pano by stitching together the first two panos.
I think it more or less worked. The panorama definitely represents how the scene looked on May 31, 2015 at about 20:45.
Since Flickr doesn't do full screen well, click here to view in high resolution and zoom in as desired.
Hugin Panorama Stitcher
AutoStitch
www.cs.bath.ac.uk/brown/autostitch/autostitch.html
Image Composite Editor
Moon and Sun at the Same Time
Since Flickr doesn't do full screen well, click here to view in high resolution and zoom in as desired.
One of the holy grails of skyscape photography that I have occasionally tried is to capture both the Full Moon and the Sun in the same shot. Obviously, both the Moon and the Sun need to be above the horizon at the same time. When the Moon is full, it is also very far away from the Sun and so a very wide image is needed. And to make it a skyscape, the two objects should be at similar altitudes, not very high in the sky, so that a foreground can be included.
One of the methods I have used to achieve this shot is to shoot the Full Moon rising or setting above buildings that reflect the Sun. While not quite the holy grail, at least the photons from the Moon and Sun arrive at the camera's sensor for the same image. This example from 2014 03 17 is a single exposure with a relatively narrow field. This example from 2013 10 17 is a stitched panorama of a wider field. In both cases, the Sun is reflected.
But what about getting both objects in the sky at once? Well, as I was scoping photo opps for the Full Moon of June 2, 2015 I noticed that on May 31 at 20:45, the 97% illuminated Moon and the Sun would both be at about the same altitude (7.5 deg). Since the Moon would be not quite full, it would "only" be about 170 deg away from the Sun - a pretty wide shot indeed. The relatively low altitude of both objects meant that a skyscape might be possible. A friend of mine has rooftop access on a downtown apartment building and so when the skies looked to cooperate, a plan was hatched.
I set up my tripod on the rooftop and leveled it using the on board, circular bubble level. I figured this would let me shoot a series of overlapping images with a horizontal horizon. This proved much more difficult than it looked. No matter how accurately I tried to level the tripod, when I panned the camera through 170 deg, the horizon did not remain horizontal.
At the appointed time, I shot a series of 18 images from the Moon to the Sun. It took about 7 seconds to frame each successive image, so the whole series took about 2 minutes. Unlike Moon rises and sets, when I normally shoot in Manual mode, I put my Canon T3i camera on Automatic and let it decide on the best exposure for each frame. I set the ISO to 100, knowing that the final frame would have the Sun it, so this would permit a shutter speed in the camera's range. Since this was a daytime sequence, I used a Sunny white balance. I shot the images at 75mm focal length to keep the Moon a reasonable size.
When it came time to make the panorama, the stitching software that I normally use had a difficult time. It appeared that I did not overlap the images enough, which is important for image matching by stitching software. I started with the free Hugin Panorama Stitcher which normally produces seamless pans with very good brightness and contrast matching and with HDR capabilities. However, Hugin could not create a smooth panorama and kept cutting off the Sun on the extreme right side.
Consulting the forums, I came across AutoStitch - another free software that had good reviews. However,this program also had problems and could not produce a seamless panorama.
A lot of time had been spent on this without success, so I put the project on the back burner. It was when I was looking at a great, new app called Microsoft Hyperlapse, that I came across another app from Microsoft Research called Image Composite Editor (ICE). Seeing it was free, I decided to give it a whirl. With the default settings, ICE produced a smooth panorama but still had some trouble with the last couple of frames that included the Sun and its glow. Since the horizon was not horizontal, ICE created a crop that did not include the Sun. I tried various settings with little improvement, when I hit on an idea. I created one pano using the left 9 images and a second pano using the right 9 images - so far so good. I then created the final pano by stitching together the first two panos.
I think it more or less worked. The panorama definitely represents how the scene looked on May 31, 2015 at about 20:45.
Since Flickr doesn't do full screen well, click here to view in high resolution and zoom in as desired.
Hugin Panorama Stitcher
AutoStitch
www.cs.bath.ac.uk/brown/autostitch/autostitch.html
Image Composite Editor