Digital Moon Photography with Nikon Cameras
The moon was looking particularly nice this morning just before sunrise at 58% of full, waning gibbous. So I decided to take a few pictures. I did them all hand held assisted, which means I was shooting hand held, but it was leaning up against a rock wall to stabilize everything and reduce blur due to camera shake.
First I used my Nikon P100. This is a new high end point-and-shoot with mega-zoom. In equivalents to 35mm focal length this camera goes out to 678mm. The sensor is a back lit CMOS which is bigger than what you have in a cell phone camera, but smaller than what Nikon uses with their DX series of digital SLRs. It has the very newest and most exotic vibration reduction built in.
Then I took the same pics with my D300s, using a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom lens, which is a 35mm equivalent of 450mm focal length. It has a CMOS sensor and is their top of the line prosumer in the DX series. This particular lens does not have vibration reduction.
I cropped and enlarged both to roughly the same size in Photoshop elements 8 and did some work on levels, desaturation, and lighting.
I can see things I like about both, but honestly all things considered I think the P100 comes really close to the D300s. No doubt if you put a 450mm VR lens on the D300s it would be better. But for this application, essentially hand held, the P100 is really almost equivalent. When you consider the amount of money I have invested in the D300s and its lens, versus the P100, it is really quite obvious which is the more prudent purchase.
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First I used my Nikon P100. This is a new high end point-and-shoot with mega-zoom. In equivalents to 35mm focal length this camera goes out to 678mm. The sensor is a back lit CMOS which is bigger than what you have in a cell phone camera, but smaller than what Nikon uses with their DX series of digital SLRs. It has the very newest and most exotic vibration reduction built in.
Then I took the same pics with my D300s, using a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom lens, which is a 35mm equivalent of 450mm focal length. It has a CMOS sensor and is their top of the line prosumer in the DX series. This particular lens does not have vibration reduction.
I cropped and enlarged both to roughly the same size in Photoshop elements 8 and did some work on levels, desaturation, and lighting.
I can see things I like about both, but honestly all things considered I think the P100 comes really close to the D300s. No doubt if you put a 450mm VR lens on the D300s it would be better. But for this application, essentially hand held, the P100 is really almost equivalent. When you consider the amount of money I have invested in the D300s and its lens, versus the P100, it is really quite obvious which is the more prudent purchase.
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