Tip for those folks planning on capturing the total lunar eclipse 1/20/19
Many of you are probably aware raw images can be manipulated quite a bit as was I. I have a 12 Mega Pixel Panasonic Lumix DMC fz300 bridge camera that has a Leica lens built in with the capabilities to zoom optically from 25mm to 600mm while maintaining f2.8. It also has the capability to perform “intelligent zooming” to 2400; of course I know that digital zoom is cropping. Panasonic claims that it has programming that makes digital zooming “useable”. Up until now I stayed with the very capable 600mm optical.
During my lesson preparation on lunar photography I decided to present samples ranging 25mm – 2400mm to graphically display moon size in order to help the folks set reasonable expectations for their equipment. I tried an experiment: capture a 600mm raw to compare with a 2400mm jpg (camera in extended zoom has only jpg capability). Camera was tripod mounted, manual mode, 2 sec shutter delay, ISO 100, 1/250 sec at f4. I had a nice capture at 600mm that was a raw file, the 2400mm jpg was passable (almost). I used On1’s resize to resize my 4000x3000pixel 600mm raw image to 16000×12000, save, then crop to 4000×3000 to compare. I was surprised just how well the resize looked.
first image 2400mm second image 600 to 2400mm
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Peter, the second image looks awsome but I'm not surprised. Without even looking, I could tell from your description that the 'digital zoom' isn't worth using simply because you only get a jpg out of it when you could crop the raw yourself and still have all of the raw details for editing and resizing.
I've always hated the idea of digital zoom and the ONLY advantage I can see for it is for photographers (I use the term loosely in this case) who don't post process at all and digital zoom is the only way to get that crop.
Thanks for the post, interesting comparison.
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Thanks Rick,
If one needs an image with which to plan digital zoom is worth the time. In my case I will certainly use it when presenting short cuts and tips to my club - of course the main point will be PLANNING only.
The process I used created an interim >1GB psb file. I wanted to have an accurate 2400mm simulation so I simply resized the 600mm x4 both horizontally & vertically. Maybe there's better method but I really didn't want to dive into the math any further. Eventually the psb file was cropped to the exact dimensions as the 2400mm file.
Original jpg file = almost no time PP, simulated 600>2400 close to 30 minutes.
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