exposure

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Shooting the moon

Friday, September 18th, 2009

On our recent trip, I had an opportunity to shoot the moon.  What you see below is a 400mm lens on a tripod, manually focused on the moon.  the image itself is cropped, but this is 100% of a 10 mpx file.

Moon detail

Moon detail

Here’s the thing about taking pictures of the moon: if you’re going to do it, you really want to wait until the moon is low on the horizon.  The lower it is, the larger it appears (an atmospheric effect).  In Hawaii, on the Big Island, I’ve seen it much larger and brighter.  But this was pretty good, and you can see quite a few details.

Exposure is the other tricky part.  It might take a few tries, and you’ll need to review carefully.  Basically, though: expose for a bright day.  A starting point, for example, might be f/16, ISO 50, and 1/60th (the “sunny 16″ rule).  For this, I started at 1/100, f/16, ISO 100.  The final exposure, though?  1/40th, f/5.6, ISO 200.  All that to reduce the shake on the camera.

Sometimes you have to compromise.

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Photographing snow

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Alternate title: embarrassing myself in front of the pros.

I read an opinion online (probably on Fark) that Texans are a unique breed.  They’re overly proud of themselves – not for what they’ve done or what they can to, but because of where they live.  As if they have an overly-inflated sense of value ’cause their state is big.  And the only people worse than Texans, according to this opinion, are Alaskans: convinced that they’re something special because they can somehow survive in a giant, frozen state.

There’s some truth to this.  For the better part of the last two decades, I could easily leave state (well, to anywhere other than Hawaii) and say “I’m from Alaska.”  The response: instant fawning.  Usually you become the life of the party, making up crap about how hard the winters are (they’re not usually hard in Anchorage, just long – it’s usually far worse in the midwest).

Don’t do this with a well-travelled person.  Like I did, with Moose Petersen.  Yes, I made an ass of myself to the moose, but I learned something in the process.  Imagine this conversation:

Me: so, I’m from Alaska.
Moose: yeah, so?
Me: um, so we have a bunch of unique lighting up here and I was wondering…
Moose: No you don’t.
Me: Um, nevermind, I’ll go away now.
Moose: You had a question.  Ask it.
Me: um, I was wondering… how to properly shoot… snow?
Moose: who cares? Snow is snow, it’s white.  If you blow it out, who gives a rip?  Everyone knows what it is?
Me: I’m going to slink away now…

Well, that’s pretty much what happened.  Wording has been changed (feeble memory and all that), but there are some important lessons in there.  I walked away with these thoughts:

  • Seriously, who cares about properly exposing snow?  I mean, unless it’s the primary subject.  Even then, who cares? Duh.
  • Who cares that I’m from Alaska?  Moose doesn’t.  Shoot, his photographer base camp was in Anchorage last year and it easily looked like one of the tamer places he’s been.
  • Don’t try to out-cool Moose.  He camps with bears.  I avoid biking trails where bears occasionally wander.

Since this conversation, I’ve read at least two articles since our exchange where the mighty Moose has talked about properly exposing for snow.

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