Luna (aka the Moon)

I was setting up to take some photos of the nearly full moon and as I was positioning the moon in the viewfinder, I noticed something moving across the moon, so I snapped a photo really quickly. The image is not as focused as I would like, but I could not really make the aircraft stay in place. I enlarged it to determine which aircraft it was. Given the size and shape, it was either a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320. The determining factor was that the nose of the aircraft was pointed more like the 737 than the A320. Although not the best photograph I have of the moon, it is still my favorite. What a lucky shot!

The moon was low on the horizon one night, giving the moon a red tint as the reflected light had to pass through Earth’s atmosphere as a low angle. I managed to graph my camera and tripod to get this image before it disappeared behind a neighbor’s house.

I think I took this picture the night I got my new camera. I wanted to see what a 50 megapixel camera would do for the moon. It was quite more detailed than what I was able to get with the older camera (which was not bad).

I had recently picked up a 2.0x teleconverter and wanted to check out the moon detail at 1200 mm focal length. I think it did a pretty good job.

Another photograph with at 1200 mm focal length. I was checking out the detail showing more of the moon. One challenge of photographing the moon, especially a full moon, is that the whites are so bright that it will “blow out” the image and lose a lot of detail if the camera settings are not right. I frequently have this issue as I am still learning the subtle nuances of balancing the sensor settings, f-stops, and shutter speed, and all their impact on the amount of light that is captured. Bright light colors on a dark background introduce additional challenges that have to be accounted for using the metering in the camera. It is a lot to keep in mind, but fortunately the moon doesn’t move as fast as a Green-winged Teal (as least from my frame of reference).

While trying to get a shot of the first hummingbird of the year at the feeders, and not seeing the bird, I was shooting other things. One of them was this shot of the moon. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out as I was hand-holding the camera, but surprisingly it turned out better then expected.