LightSmith Photography Photo of the Day

Day 358: Knowing exactly what to do

When I started this blog, my chief aim was to force myself to become a better photographer. It's always been the case with me that I pick up the basics of almost any skill with relative ease. But I also bore easily and have never mastered anything. I had hoped that maybe photography would be the thing that I would master and I can say that this year has brought me closer to that wish. Still I feel about as far away from that goal as the subject of today's photo. But having said that, today's photo represents just how far I've come this year.

Have you ever tried to photograph the moon? If you have, I suspect you've ended up with a bright white shape of some sort without detail of any kind. That's the way most of the hundreds of moon shots I have taken have looked. Even with good equipment, this seemingly simple shot evaded me. Well tonight I was coming home from a movie and I had the top down on my car. All the way home I saw this beautiful moon and about halfway home decided to try once again to get a decent moon photo. But in those 10 minutes of drive-time, I knew exactly what I needed to do to accomplish the shot. And so I got home, grabbed my longest lens, my tripod and camera and drove a block away to get an unobstructed view. And then I setup the camera and shot this photo. I didn't experiment. I didn't hunt around for settings. I knew exactly what to do. And that felt great.

For those who might be interested in the setup here goes: First of all, I selected my crop camera. The crop camera multiplies the zoom ratio to get in closer. I then used my longest lens which was a 300mm. To get a better shot I really needed about a 500mm lens. I mounted the lens to the tripod and the camera to the lens and set focus to manual. I also set the camera itself to manual exposure. I used a small aperture to increase the chance of getting an in focus shot and I used a fairly fast shutter speed of 1/250. I then used the live view feature of the camera and zoomed into the subject with the live view to adjust my focus. It was still quite difficult to focus because the details of the moon still look very tiny. I used a remote shutter release and snapped away.

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Tags: July

EXIF

Focal Length: 300 mm
Exposure: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f/9
ISO: 100
Camera Model: Canon EOS 7D