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A Photographic Image Quality Test Using the Moon

by Roger N. Clark

All images, text and data on this site are copyrighted.
They may not be used except by written permission from Roger N. Clark.
All rights reserved.
BUT MOON IMAGES ON THIS PAGE MAY BE FREELY COPIED AND USED IN THE CONTEXT OF THE TEST ON THIS PAGE, MEANING YOU CAN COPY MANIPULATE AND POST ON A WEB SITE TO SHOW YOUR RESULTS.

This page shows results from testing different focal lengths on different cameras with different sized sensors. The goal is to photograph the moon with about 400 mm focal length in 35-mm equivalent field of view.

Figure 1. Moon image obtained on April 4, 2006 at 8 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/50 second at f/8. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image is the camera produced jpeg, cropped, with no other post camera processing. The 1D Mark II camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so this image had the field of view of a 390 mm lens on a 35mm camera.

Figure 2. Moon image obtained on April 4, 2006 at 8 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/50 second at f/8. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image was produced with Photoshop CS2 raw converter, with all settings set to neutral except sharpening set to 35. A 16-bit tif file was written, and then a jpeg created with highest quality setting using save for web. No other processing was done. The 1D Mark II camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so this image had the field of view of a 390 mm lens on a 35mm camera.

Moon images obtained by others at the same lunar phase:

Shot at 8:45pm CDT, ISO 100, 1/10 sec at f/11. Nikon D200 with Tamron SP 300mm f/2.8, on a tripod by David Dyer-Bennet. http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/obscure/rncmoon2322/

The moon taken with a Canon 20D, 70-200 f/2.8 L IS and a 1.4x TC @ 230mm, by Bret. http://www.pbase.com/bret/image/58212690

The moon with an FZ5 (12x zoom), by David Taylor, Edinburgh. Note the April 4 image was under hazy conditions and the contrast is reduced and not due to the lens or camera. There is an impressive amount of detail in the craters for such a small camera (especially compared to the cost difference between it and the DSLRs with their $1000+ telephoto lenses). http://www.david-taylor.myby.co.uk/imaging/moon.htm

The moon with a Panasonic FZ20 12x zoom (432mm equivalent) Mar 7, 2006. 5:40 pm local time. http://s48.photobucket.com/albums/f223/keimah/?action=view¤t=Moon-07Mar06.jpg

Figure 3a. Moon image obtained on April 5, 2006 at 8:24 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/125 second at f/5.6. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image is the camera produced jpeg, cropped, with no other post camera processing. The 1D Mark II camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so this image had the field of view of a 390 mm lens on a 35mm camera. Image ID = JZ3F9763.

Figure 3b. Moon image obtained on April 5, 2006 with an FZ20 5-megapixel camera at 72 mm focal length (432 mm equivalent). This image is the camera produced jpeg, cropped, with no other post camera processing. The smaller apparent size of this moon image compared to Figure 3a is due to the 5 versus 8-megapixels, which would make the image about 38% smaller (0.62 factor), but the equivalent focal length is larger, resulting in an image only about 30% smaller (0.7x factor).

Figure 4a. Moon image obtained on April 5, 2006 at 8:24 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/125 second at f/5.6. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image was produced with Photoshop CS2 raw converter, with all settings set to neutral except sharpening set to 35. A 16-bit tif file was written, and then a jpeg created with highest quality setting using save for web. No other processing was done. The 1D Mark II camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so this image had the field of view of a 390 mm lens on a 35mm camera. Image ID = JZ3F9763.

Figure 4b. Moon image obtained on April 5, 2006 with an FZ20 5-megapixel camera at 72 mm focal length (432 mm equivalent). This image was produced with Photoshop CS2, scaled with levels, and stretched to give a similar response as the image in Figure 4a.

Figure 5a. Moon image obtained on April 5, 2006 at 8:24 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/125 second at f/5.6. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image was produced with Photoshop CS2 raw converter, with all minimum settings settings except sharpness at 50, and image size 6144x4096. A 16-bit tif file was written, and then a The image was enlarged in Photoshop by another 1.141x to give 2x the original size. Next, the shadow/highlight tool was used to decrease the intensity of the brightest parts of the image. The Photoshop converter produced excessive noise in the sky, so the sky was selected and the curves tool was used to reduce noise. Next, InagesPlus was used with a Richardson-Lucy image restoration run, 5x5 box, 29 iterations. Finally a jpeg created with highest quality setting using save for web. This image shows what can be done with a high signal-to-noise DSLR image. The 1D Mark II camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so this image had the field of view of a 390 mm lens on a 35mm camera. Note the difference in the background between this image and the raw converted image from Photoshop in Figure 4. Image ID = JZ3F9763. Note this image was created from the same raw file as in Figure 4. Print this image at 300 ppi and you will see the sharpness of a 15.57 x 23.36 inch print (if you use the uncropped image).

Figure 5b. Moon image obtained on April 5, 2006 with an FZ20 5-megapixel camera at 72 mm focal length (432 mm equivalent). This is the image from Figure 4b with Richardson-Lucy image restoration, 5x5 box, 30 iterations.

Figure 6. Moon image obtained on April 6, 2006 at 8 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/125 second at f/5.6. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image is the camera produced jpeg, cropped, with no other post camera processing. The 1D Mark II camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so this image had the field of view of a 390 mm lens on a 35mm camera. Image ID = JZ3F9777. This image was obtained during high wind and atmospheric turbulence (poor seeing).

Figure 7. Moon image obtained on April 6, 2006 at 8 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/125 second at f/5.6. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image was produced with Photoshop CS2 raw converter, with all settings set to neutral except sharpening set to 35. A 16-bit tif file was written, and then a jpeg created with highest quality setting using save for web. No other processing was done. The 1D Mark II camera has a 1.3x crop factor, so this image had the field of view of a 390 mm lens on a 35mm camera. Image ID = JZ3F9777. This image was obtained during high wind and atmospheric turbulence (poor seeing).

Figure 8. Moon image obtained on April 6, 2006 at 8 pm MST with a Canon 1D Mark II digital camera with a 300 mm f/4 L IS lens, ISO 100, manual exposure 1/125 second at f/5.6. The camera was mounted on a tripod, and mirror lock-up was used. This image was produced with Photoshop CS2 raw converter, with all minimum settings settings except sharpness at 50, and image size 6144x4096. A 16-bit tif file was written, and then a The image was enlarged in Photoshop by another 1.141x to give 2x the original size. Next, the shadow/highlight tool was used to decrease the intensity of the brightest parts of the image. The Photoshop converter produced excessive noise in the sky, so the sky was selected and the curves tool was used to reduce noise. Next, InagesPlus was used with a Richardson-Lucy image restoration run, 5x5 box, 29 iterations. Finally a jpeg created with highest quality setting using save for web. Image ID = JZ3F9777. Note this image was created from the same raw file as in Figure 7. Print this image at 300 ppi and you will see the sharpness of a 15.57 x 23.36 inch print (if you use the uncropped image). This image was obtained during high wind and atmospheric turbulence (poor seeing).

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First published April, 2006.
Last updated May 1, 2006