Sony Mavica FD91

All these images are taken with the Sony Mavica FD91.

The Moon

My images superimposed on a 1st quarter image
taken with the Mavica using a 2x teleconverter

Image1
Image2	Maurolycus
Image3
Image4	Crater Theophilus (in centre)
Image5	Craters Eudoxus and Artistoteles.
Image6

The above images were all taken on the night of 22nd April 1999. I used a "hand held" Mavica FD91 (digital camera) held at the eyepiece of the Godlee 8" refractor at the Manchester Astronomical Society. The shutter was set at 1/180 to keep camera shake down, this resulted in images that are not really properly exposed, resulting in the 'Mavica' graininess, (better next time I hope). The focus was on automatic, and I had the lens set to approx mid focal length.

It was not until the next day when I was superimposing my images on top of a Lick Observatory image that I realised just how small an area of the moon I was imaging. I replaced the Lick image with my own that was taken the same evening with the Mavica without a telescope, but with a 2x teleconverter. I needed the good Lick image to help me position my images.

The images are all with South at the top, as per telescope viewing.

My project to image all the Lunar Phases

Misc Lunar Images

Crater Clavius
25th April 1999
At eyepiece of the Godlee 8" refractor.

Crater Tycho
25th April 1999
At eyepiece of the Godlee 8" refractor.

26th March 1999
This was taken with a yellow filter - see below:

Image of the month at mavican.com

Image taken with a 2x teleconverter (Vivanco VC 95/1 T.) on a Mavica FD91. Hand held, spot metering. (The FD91s' steadyShot feature comes in very handy for this type of shot.)

To get rid of the blue haze caused by some chromatic aberation, either in the teleconverter, the Mavica lens or a combination, I used a yellow filter. This has the effect of making the images much sharper and more contrasty. To get the colour back to as it should be I did...

1. Adjusted the levels setting to get the sky black, without loosing any detail on the Moon.

2. Converted to grey scale.

3. Sharpened very slightly (i.e. used sharpen then reduced it by 50%)

4. Converted to Duotone (in photoshop, just used the default settings).

5. Converted to RGB.

6. Cropped image.

7. Saved file.

This is the method I now use to take all my Lunar pictures.

Full frame showing how big the Moon is in the picture.

24th March 1999
This is cropped and shown full size, with some enhancing

This Moon image was taken with a 2x teleconveter on the Mavica FD91. The lens is a Vivanco VC 95/1 T with 52mm thread to fit straight on the Mavica. I got the lens from Jessops in the UK.

This lens has a blue haze on bright/dark edges as does the Sony VCL-R2052 but it costs half the price (which makes me feel better). If you are carefull with what you shoot this is not too much of a problem. In the image above, which is quite a colourless object, I removed the blue channel from the image in photoshop, then converted to greyscale, then back to RGB, then gave it a tint the colour that it was before I removed the blue channel.

I don't use this method anymore, as I believe using a yellow filter will give better results, but it's a good way to enhance an existing image.

See my review of the LE-Adapter that allows you to connect your Mavica to a telescope.

Maintained by Michael Oates
Email:

Last modified October 4, 2005