I've shot many time lapse videos of the moon in its various phases in times past, taking hundreds, if not thousands, of still images of the moon as it traversed my camera's viewfinder.
So I thought I'd try something different on this occasion, using just one still image of the full moon shot against a completely black sky.
I also wanted to try and produce an 8K video, just to see if it could be done using a very different workflow from what I usually do.
So to start the process I needed a photo of the full moon, shot to the highest quality I could manage with my current camera, a full frame Canon EOS 6DMK2 fitted with a 100-400mm zoom lens used at its maximum focal length.
To get the best quality image I could required decent shot discipline, with my camera and lens fixed firmly to my tripod.
Other considerations to achieve a sharp, well exposed image involved using the optimum lens aperture of f11, a remote release and mirror lockup to avoid shutter vibrations, a fast enough shutter speed to prevent motion blur and manual focusing using live view at a 10x magnification.
Having got the single, high quality image I needed it was then a case of processing the file in Adobe Lightroom, using the enhance feature to double the resolution to a whopping 12480x8320 pixels, more than enough for an 8K video.
Further enhancements to colour, contrast, sharpness and so on followed in Lightroom before the new file was imported into Adobe Premiere, using keyframes to track the image of the moon across the video frame.
And in the end I was really pleased with the outcome, and I'm definitely going to try this technique again on the moon in its different phases.
Filename - moon full timelapse 08
Camera - Canon EOS 6DMK2
Lens - 100-400mm zoom @ 400mm
Exposure - 1/60 sec @ f/11, ISO100
Filters - None.
Music - Bach Cello Suite No. 1, G Major, Prelude - Cooper Cannell.
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (8K, 4K and HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 36 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2023 unless otherwise stated.