Filming the Moon

From: Ken Paul Rosenthal (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Mar 22 2008 - 13:54:37 PDT


I'm filming various phases of the moon with a Canon 1014XLS super 8 camera, outfitted with a 1.4
teleconverter on the lens, so I can get fairly close. The camera angle is 150 degrees. If there are clouds passing before the moon, I shoot continuous speed at 24fps. However, if the night sky is clear and the full moon (or other partial phases)
is up, I'm shooting stop motion, either 1 frame every 5 seconds or 1
frame every second. Regardless, the shutter is still 150 degrees. I'm shooting reversal stocks super 8 stocks Plus-X 100ASA and Ektachrome 100D.

I'm confused about proper f-stops as the still photography literature pretty consistently says to expose as if you're shooting the sun, namely between f8-11 with a shutter speed of 250th/second with 100ASA film. However the built-in meter on my Canon 1014XLS reads fairly
wide open at at f4. So I took a guess and shot at f8. I also put a yellow filter
on the lens for contrast. It occurs to me know I could have compared with an external spot meter and will try that tonight. Of course, the test roll should bear out my results, but was wondering if anyone could share some insights.

Another concern I have is that there
was a soft halo in the lens, same as when I was shooting street lamps
at night. In a recent article, Mr. Tiffen (of Tiffen filters) advised not shooting with filters when shooting lamps at
night because the extra glass causes the light to bounce back and forth between the filter and the lens it is attached to. But I decided to keep the
yellow filter on as the halo from the moon was still present. I suppose the optics for super 8 cameras, even with a lens as sweet as the 1014's, don't handle glare so well.

Suggestions on the shooting the moon/moon glare/street lamp glare?

Thanks, Ken

http://www.kenpaulrosenthal.com
http://www.crookedbeauty.com

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