Shooting the moon

Last night (Wed 23/4) the Photography Club had it's regular meeting at the boat ramp just north-east of the bridge on the Shoalhaven River. I got there a bit late, so I was trying to be considerate to all the people who had got there early by driving around with my lights off. I shouldn't have bothered. The next 5-6 cars just came barreling through with their lights on. Oh well.

It was a good lesson. I learnt about shooting the moon. The trick wasn't as obvious as I thought. I originally thought that I had to go for a longer exposure, but I was quickly shown that even a 1 second exposure gives the moon way too much time to move. To get one of those shots with lots of detail, you need to shoot at a fast shutter speed and a large aperture. 1/60th of a second minimum.

Unfortunately, you also need a decent telephoto lens. Apparently 55mm is a bit small.

I ended up with a couple of ok shots of the bridge from along the water with some nice reflections, and a couple of the jetty.

The bright fluro lights of the bridge, in conjunction with the impossibly bright light of the moon and the orange/yellow street light behind successfully confused my cameras white balance... and me too. I tried all my white balance settings but couldn't come up with the answer. My resulting image was just to warm & orange. So, I feel compelled to sing the praises of shooting in RAW format. I imported my pictures into Adobe Camera Raw, easily adjusted my white balance and changed my jetty poles from orange/yellow back to the nice, bright white they should have been.

I'll put a photo or 2 up next week.