Friday 13 June 2014

Day 164: Stormchasers beware...

Day 164: ...the Lunar-tic isn't far behind

Friday 13th, full moon rising...all the luck or lunar-cy, whichever way you care to see it. A few posts ago I introduced the sunrise tweeptser gang, up early to catch the beautiful sunrises we see here in Brisbane. Well, there's another group: the moonwatchers whose aim is to capture the best moon shot possible. If you drew a Venn diagram of the sunrisers and the moonwatchers, you'd find Shelley Lloyd (@shelleymlloyd) and me in that intersecting bit. 

Last night, Shelley captured the best pic of the moon, she won the interwebs. Today, with the promise of a full moon (at 2.12pm) rising at 5.16pm, the challenge was set to capture that moon rising up over the Manly waterfront (me) and from Mt Coot-tha (Shelley). 

There were clouds and showers early this morning, the sky cleared during the day but by the afternoon, the clouds had resettled on the horizon. Never mind, this is largely an exercise in learnings, especially when it comes to the moon pics, and besides, I like the Manly waterfront so I don't really need an excuse. Last time I was down this way was a couple of months ago to capture the (not so) 'supermoon'.

So, what happened? Well, I learned I prefer to shoot the moon in blue sky mode rather than the dark; there must be a trick to those marvellous shots one sees of a clear focussed moon reflecting over the water...you can have one or the other in one shot, not both, not with the dial switched to 'M'... Well, to be fair, I'm sure some people can, I can't, just yet.

Anyway, here's a few: the waiting and the 'event', well almost. I can see I'll need to learn to photoshop next...



Sunset colours on Moreton Bay (ISO 100, 1/125, f4.0, 5.06pm)

Port of Brisbane (ISO 125, 2secs, f5.6, 5.37pm)

Looking back to Manly (ISO 125, 13secs, f5.6, 5.39pm)

Here it comes (ISO 125, 5secs, f4.0, 5.44pm)

Moonlight reflection (ISO 125, 1.3secs, f5.6, 5.57pm)

Moon / no reflection (ISO 125, 1/250, f5.6, 6.11pm)
Reflection / no moon (ISO 125, 1sec, f5.6, 6.15pm)

It's those last two you have to imagine together. Oh, I also took along the b & w film camera, but we'll have to wait for that...

[Camera : Canon EOS 60D, 75-300mm lens, 5.06pm to 6.15pm]