Moon silhouettes

This beautiful real-time capture of the moon rising over the Mount Victoria Lookout in the capital city of Wellington, New Zealand was taken two days ago by Mark Gee. A screenshoot:



Full video can be seen here.

...After a lot of planning and many failed attempts, I finally managed to pull it off.

There were numerous factors I had to consider and get right to capture the footage. The weather, moon phases and finding a suitable location where I could actually get the moon rising directly over the lookout. Finally it all came together – I found the perfect location, and the weather in Wellington was amazing! Luckily there were people watching the moon rise from the Mount Victoria Lookout. I didn’t know what to expect with the performance of everyone up there, but I couldn’t have directed it better myself, even though they had no idea I was filming them. I shot 8 minutes of footage between 9.14pm and 9.22pm and the finished edit shows about the first 3 minutes of that.

Technically, getting the shot was quite difficult. I was 2.1km away from my subject, and there was no room for error. I only had one chance of getting the shot right on the night. Thankfully it all came together, and what I ended up with was this wonderful performance of total strangers silhouetted against the full moon as it rose above the lookout.

Technical details – The footage was shot with a Canon 1D MkIV in video mode, with a Canon EF 500mm f/4 lens and a Canon 2x Extender, giving me the equivalent of 1300mm focal length.

very cool

you must have been pretty far away to have the moon that large in the background.




2.1 km away, lol, maybe i should read first.

Damn, i thought we were going to see silhouettes of craft or something on the moon, not silhouettes of people in front of the moon. It does look good, but cant help but feel a little let down

Very cool, I've seen pictures like this before but never video.

Does the moon look as big when you see it in person? I seem to remember seeing something about the type of lens you use makes it look bigger like an optical illusion of some sort...

Another thing is it shows how fast the moon moves too, it normally looks static in the sky but even in real time it moves pretty fast.

Originally posted by roughycannon
Very cool, I've seen pictures like this before but never video.

Does the moon look as big when you see it in person? I seem to remember seeing something about the type of lens you use makes it look bigger like an optical illusion of some sort...

Another thing is it shows how fast the moon moves too, it normally looks static in the sky but even in real time it moves pretty fast.

edit on 30-1-2013 by roughycannon because: (no reason given)

S&F for the OP.

A telephoto lens on a camera has that effect look at this image below the photographer used different focal lengths for the pictures, the glass was photographed to keep the size the same on the images but look at the building in the background that's what is happening with the Moon picture/video.



The image was from here Beginners Photography if you want to learn some more.