It was 5:20 am and my goodness did I struggle when my 11-year-old came into the bedroom to wake us up.
'Blood moon!' he said.
'What?!' my wife had no idea what he was talking about, but she heard the word 'blood' and panicked! Dragging myself out I stepped into the fresh morning air in my dressing gown and ugg boots to see this.
'Well, that looks pretty sweet!' Grabbing my camera (normally used for weddings and surf) I attempted a few pathetic shots that were blurry and not even focussed. Despite being a professional photographer, my lens is not what you'd usually use for night time shots. You see the aperture is set to f6.3 when fully zoomed.
After a few failed hand held shots with my ISO up high, I realised it's not as bright as the moon usually is.
So I tried my monopod. Fail.
Ugh, suppose I'll get the tripod. I'm a little lazy with landscape (or in this case nightscape) photos, because I like taking photos of people. But hey, it's a blood moon and Mars is right there as well. Why not pull out the expensive tripod that hardly ever gets touched?
It took me a few minutes, but finally, I'm ready to go. The first several are still shakey. I set the shutter to timer, so I wasn't touching the camera, but it was still really blurry. I made sure all of the nobs were tight, and then slowly got my settings accurate.
Normally with sky shots, you want a speed that's not too long (or the stars will blur) and not to slow, or it will underexpose. So I tried both, and came up dry. I found with my camera (Nikon D800) that it was handling ISO 4000 so why not use it? Then I found the best exposure to be at 1/3 second. I was tempted to go and get my 70-200mm f2.8 so that I could have a faster speed, but then I'd lose the amount of detail I needed.
So I took a few that I was happy with, then pulled it into photoshop (after another attempted sleep and coffee to greet the day at a more acceptable time!), opened the RAW file and only needed a little sharpening and noise reduction, and there you have it. Sure I could've brightened it a little more, but hey, I like dark... moody... brooding... shots anyway!
So here are the settings.
Settings
600mm
f6.3
1/3s
ISO 4000
I also took this of Mars - but even with 36.2 Megapixels and 600mm, it was much too small to take it.
Maybe I need a telescope lens instead?
Nah, can't be bothered!
Thanks for reading! Please follow for more in the future!
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http://lukegreaves.com.au
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Hey it’s Jessi!! Glad I found you!! Do an introduction post when you can, and hashtag #introduceyourself and #teamaustralia to start connecting with more people :-)
@mattclarke how would my friend get involved with Team Australia other than using the hashtag?
Also, use #photofeed to be seen by more photographers.
I know this guy :)
Oh sweet!!
Instructions for joining team Australia are near the bottom of @choogirl's teamaustralia intro posts. If you need any help or have any questions, just ask her. She's vegan so she won't bite! ;) She'll probably also be really pleased to have someone new to introduce, because it's been a bit slow of late.
Fantastic advice. I second this :)
The Adelaide family grows stronger! #welcome
Hey Luke. Great to see a familiar face :)
Love that shot. My attempts would look more like your Mars.
@holoz0r, @izzydawn, @shaidon, @timmm, @nerdfury, we have a new photographer.
On Steem? In SA? You're a baller. We use that tag to look out for each others' posts.
Gradually shift to blogging/posting as you pick up followers from your commenting, but don't make it a real focus until you have at least 100-200 followers.
Those who've burned out do so because they try to build an audience through blogging, like doing standup in your lounge room and waiting for an audience to arrive.
It doesn't matter how funny you are, nobody's laughing, cause nobody's there.
So you can see Steem as Jessi does or anyone else by just typing
/feedafter their username in the URL.Find someone good, poach their favourite authors.
There's a lot to take in, but don't worry about trying to absorb it all unless you're curious.
Sing out if you're stuck on anything, either here, on discord (mattclarke#6202) or if you can make it to one of the monthly meetups.
Last Thursday of the month, from 6pm at The Jade on Flinders St.
From this summary post by @minismallholding.
And also follow @photofeed if you don’t already and want to connect with more photographers 😊
✅ @thesparrow, I gave you an upvote on your post! Please give me a follow and I will give you a follow in return and possible future votes!
Thank you in advance!
Nice one! I'm afraid I left my daughter, @izzydawn, to it with her camera. I've not had chance to look at what she got more than briefly. She's still learning at the moment anyway.
Welcome to steemit :)
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STOPWoooo I’m actually impressed by the Mars shot
Welcome to the #mallsballers!
I am not a professional photographer, but I use a Canon Powershot SX 430 IS. and I adjust the zoom until I get the moon where I want it. Because of the zoom and micro movements it's difficult to get a proper shot, so I take multiple shots, even attached to a tripod.
When I am happy I run it through Paint Shop Pro and remove the 'Gamma correction' to get a clearer image once again.
Congrats on getting that much of Mars. I wondered which planet it was at the time.
You seemed to have picked up a few other celestial bodies in the moon photo as well. Pretty cool.
https://steemit.com/mallsballers/@shaidon/the-full-moon-and-mars
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