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Lens for shooting the moon?
  • tonalttonalt

    I'm going to video shoot moon and need good tele lens for that. It needs to be sharp as possible, but not too expensive. Since I have m4/3 cameras I could try some older vintage lens with m4/3 adapter. And I also need to get as close as possible to the moon.

    Any recommendations? Aperture doesn't matter that much since moon is so bright.

  • 8 Replies sorted by
  • tylerknighttylerknight

    Get a telescope and t-mount adapter :)

    There is literally no lens that will get you the quality and close-up framing of a telescope.

    I have shot both eclipses (solar and lunar) with my celestron 800mm f8 telescope and the photos came out amazing!

    Also shooting video with the etc mode you can have an 800mm telescope doubled with the etc which makes it 1600mm and then take into consideration the crop factor and you have yourself a 3200mm lens :)

  • izashizash

    I have an old 500mm/f10 m42 mirror lens. This is the moon shot with it on a GH2:

    If you go to the end of this next video, the last shot is with the same lens in ETC mode:

  • rotggrotgg

    hacked gh2 lens vivitar 70-210 ext tele mode

  • Manu4VendettaManu4Vendetta

    And get a very good and solid tripod. A large telephoto vibrates a lot with GH's, some time try recording a full moon with a 150mm and ETC actived (600mm), I only touch record and let the camera recording and the small wind make great vibrations.

  • hellrazorhellrazor

    I used the 45-200mm pana zoom in ETC which you can get pretty cheap by now. very sharp but tough to focus on the subject.

  • v10tdiv10tdi

    I've used the 100-300mm Panasonic lens and it works well. Not sure how much they are used, maybe a bit over $500.

    I also have an older 400mm f6.3 Alpex (Minolta MD mount) that I bought for $80. It takes wonderful pics of the moon, but you'll need an adapter (cheap) or focal reducer (more expensive) to mount it on your m43 camera. In addition, you'll need a tripod (must for the moon anyways, I think).

    The total price of the Alpex option would probably be less than the 100-300mm Panny lens, but it would be much less versatile. I use my 100-300mm lens for lots of situations, but rarely use the Alpex since it is heavy and you almost always need a tripod.

  • Dark_BlueDark_Blue

    Here is my recent video of the Moon shot with GH2 and FD 70-210mm. The Canon is the only lens I have at the time with such range and for the price it's a good start, but I'm also looking for something with more reach. The first half of the video is the original clip. The second is the same clip zoomed in to about 180% in Premiere.

  • tonalttonalt

    Good suggestions but I was hoping some really tele lenses, like 400-600mm.

    How about mirror lenses, like Sigma 600mm?

    but the picture quality seems awful.. but if there would be alternative with better quality?

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