This was a hard one to get. Chosen out of about 20 tries.
Setup as follows:
1 - Set E-510 to MF, Image Stabilization ON, Mirror Lockup to 3 second and exposure to 1 minute.
2 - Take a Tamron 300mm F5.6 @F16. Focus on infinity and set aperture to F16. Put on a C-PL filter (to make it around 1.5 stop slower).
3 - Take the kit 14-42 zoom it out completely, set focus at around 0,8m and set aperture to F9.
4 - Switch on a Metz 48 AF1 flash, put in on Manual and step it down to 1/32.
5 - Put your Wilson racket nearby and a black towel too.
All set? Let's go.
1 - Mount the 300mm on the tripod and the camera on the 300mm.
2 - Compose with the moon on the corner.
3 - Put the lens cap on.
4 - Pull the shutter.
5 - Gently pull the cap away from the lens. As soon as it's not touching the lens very swiftly remove and put the cap back. (I guestimate this movement will induce an exposure of around 1/80s)
6 - Remove the 300mm (with camera attached) from the tripod and put it inside the towel.
7 - Change to 14mm lens.
8 - Mount camera back on tripod and point it at a clear part of the sky.
9 - Remove the cap quickly so your hand doesn't have time to expose.
10 - Take the flash and racket, try your best to frame it and then press the fire button on the flash.
11 - You are done! Now it's time to place the cap and towel on the camera so it doesn't expose anything else.
So, was it complicated? Not as much as it looks except for framing. An incredible knightmare as I would almost never get the whole racket to show let alone my hand.
Now some heavy straightning, some levels twitching to hide some sky and a part of a building on the lower left, a bit of HR and then I mirrored the image as it looks a bit more dynamic. Finally a border and that's it!
Fortunatelly I got a very interesting cloud tail for the Moon, but most unfortunately the straightening/cropping process (and a repeated moon on the wide angle shot) forced me to throw a lot away and the trail isn't consistent with the racket placement... :(
I'm not very happy about the result but I decided to submit after so much work to get it done.
Thanks for looking!...
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Clever idea for this one- I’ve considered using the lens switch idea for a similar shot with the moon, but have not actually gotten weather to cooperate for what I had in mind (yet). One suggestion that might help you out though… for the first exposure of the moon, you should use a piece of black paper/tagboard with a slit in it, which you then swipe down across the lens in order to simulate your own shutter. You can be much more accurate and get better results this way. You can adjust the “shutter duration” by the size of the slit and the speed you drop it in front of the lens. Then just hold the black card against the lens as you switch. You’ve got a bit of uneven lighting going on with the second exposure, and I’m not sure if it’s due to the difference in reflectivity of your hand/the handle to the front of the racquet or if your light source was not aligned perpendicular to your subject. Adjusting one or both of these factors will help keep lighting more uniform and prevent your hand from ghosting out. You may also just need to widen the beam by diffusion a bit, but I’m not too familiar with your flash unit or your subject-flash distance so can’t really say. Definitely an amusing subject matter, and I like the take on the challenge. Border is a bit overpowering for me as well.
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