Strawberry Full Moon

It's been soooo long since I've pulled out my camera and played around with it, but last night as I was walking into the bedroom to get something, I saw the gloriously full moon peeking over the treetops in the neighbor's yard. It stopped me in my tracks! What is it about the moon that gives it such power, such pull? Does it do that to you? I'm betting it does, even if you won't admit it out loud. Imagine if we had TWO moons, or if we were on the moon and could look up and see Earth in our night sky! But that's for another post - ha.

So I quickly dropped what I was doing and went in search of my camera. I've gotten better about leaving the clip attached that allows the camera to fasten onto the tripod (it takes forever to screw on!), but as I grabbed my gear, I was frantically wracking my brain, trying to remember what settings to use to shoot the moon. I had to be quick: opportunity for the best shots is fleeting as the moon continues to inch upward.

I did remember to use the "bulb" setting, but the f-stop and shutter speed were a little trickier. I clicked off several before I found my groove. The first picture in the series below is a rather bland shot - the moon appears as nothing more than a seemingly smooth, white orb - but I'm posting it because it shows just how much setting changes the shot. Old hat to those of you who are experts at photography, but an interesting reminder to the rest of us!



Focal length = 170mm
f-stop = 5.6
shutter speed = 1/5






Focal length = 300 mm
f-stop = 22
shutter speed = 1/4





Focal length = 300mm
f-stop = 16
shutter speed = 1/25





Focal length = 300mm
f-stop = 36
shutter speed = 1/10



Aren't the differences amazing? Love the detail that comes through on the last three... I was trying to draw a correlation between f-stop and shutter speed (as it relates to the detail), but I can't - the values are all over the map: long, short, fast, faster. I think the 3rd on the list, here, is my favorite. Which do you like better?

Sturgeon Moon

You know me and full moons... drawn to them like (fill in here with any number of cliches!) On August 24th, the Sturgeon moon was full at 1:05 p.m. ET. It was given its name by fishing tribes because the sturgeon fish (in the Great Lakes and elsewhere) were most readily caught during the month of August. Notable about this month's full moon is that it's the smallest full moon of the year. It will be 252,518 miles away - the farthest distance its orbit takes it from Earth.

Here's a picture I took 1 day past full with lots of clouds:










The moon is no longer full in this picture but my husband and I were out with the telescope looking the moon... it looks so awesome through a telescope! My next challenge is to figure out how to hook my camera up to the telescope so I can capture the closeup image. In the meantime, I used the longest camera lens I have... I like the detail that shows up here: