Some time ago, I discussed the concept of a mineral moon shot. Basically, you take a photo of the moon, or a stack of photos, and then process them to bring out the colouration of different areas of the surface. Different areas, the seas, the mountains, the plains, have different minerals on the surface that scatter light of different wavelengths in different ways so that reds, blues, purples, and even yellows, can be brought out in a photo of the moon that will most likely have appeared as nothing more than fifty shades of grey to the naked eye.
Well, you may recall I had a Sigma 150-600mm lens that I originally bought to take photos of the moon but that became my mainstay through various cameras for bird photography. I have now traded-in that lens for one more suited to my Canon R7 mirrorless camera, the Canon RF 100-500mm L series F4.5-7.1L USM. The above moonshot was taken using that kit and denoised in DxO PureRaw 4 and levels adjusted to taste in PaintShopPro. PSP was then used to incrementally raise the saturation to reveal the minerals in the image below.
The quality of the photos with the R7 and this new lens are far better than the ones I was getting with this camera and my 8-year old Sigma lens despite, the additional reach of the Sigma at 600mm as opposed to 500mm. The photos are even better than those I’ve got with a smartphone camera clamped to the objective lens of a 5-inch reflector telescope! I’ve not successfully used a dSLR with my telescope, unfortunately.