Shootin' the Moon
Learning my camera and photography in general certainly makes me want to either quit trying so hard and just take pictures of my cats or my kids or pretty much quit whining and deal with it. I prefer both and am dealing with the latter part.
I visit this site quite a bit because over a year ago when my mom told me about this gal and her beautiful photography I had to check it out. I've been hooked ever since and realized she isn't that much different with her outlook on photography than mine and I wanted to become better too. She also explains photography in english and clearly enough for any photography newbies. And learning in English, not Greek is how I learn best. Course she is certainly much farther ahead and far better than me but hey, I'm all about a challenge and mastering this picture snapping thing.
So when I read this and the attempt at shooting for the moon, it sparked a new challenge for me. And stress too. Because as frustrating as taking pictures of the moon is and getting half way decent pictures, somehow I thought it would be worth it. I mean how cool to achieve shots like that? Not to mention Yooper Jr.'s love for astrology. I've also studied when the moon will appear in the sky, what times of the month it will show up(Not that other time of the month, geesh! But then again, if the moon and my little friend show up at the same time of month, I would be better off just locking my camera up and sitting down with a little 2 buck Chuck. ) where it will peek out at me in the sky, what weather conditions will hold for me and my camera, and whether going outside in 2 degree temperatures is worth that much effort. I've become a moon watching nerd. Yooper teases me about studying moon phases saying he can show me many moons....... Gotta love a man who has a sense of humor. Course at about that time he will get a punch in his stomach with me exclaiming, "Its the dead of winter, what else am I going to do?". 
This picture I took back in December when the moon was at its fullest and setting in the west early in the morning. I figured I needed to set my ISO high at 400, since it was still quite dark out, and set my camera to manual mode with an aperture of F/5.6, hoping for a quick shutter speed to snap this shot and get all the details of the moon's surface. Ugh! Wrong! Instead I got a magical blob of nothing, although snow covered trees and blue skies are sort of pretty. And so this picture will end up in the recycle bin. I'm pretty much over it now.
Back in August, way before I read this article, I grabbed my camera, raised its ISO to 1600, shot in aperture priority mode with an aperture of f/5.6 and this is how it turned out. Sure there is a bit of detail of the moon's surface, but ugh, there is so much noise in the picture from having a high ISO(film speed) which makes it look very grainy. Live and learn. Raising ISO's is not what it's about. 
A full moon is expected this weekend. Oh please don't laugh at the mention of a full moon. Seriously, that is not what I am talking about here folks. Get your minds out of the gutter.
This moon shot I took the other day. The moon was high in the sky, sun was setting and I needed some lunar shooting practice. This is how it turned out with my lens maxed out at 200mm. This time I set my ISO at 100, changed the Aperture to f/8 and hand held the shot. I was too lazy to go drag out my tripod and hoped my lens could withstand my shivering. My lens does have VR mode, Vibration Reduction, but even just pushing the trigger down, will move your camera, especially when your fingers are frozen numb. A cool tip I picked up somewhere along the way is to hold your breath when shooting something like this, to hold things steady and avoid blurred shots. I think it worked, and didn't realize that until I zoomed into my picture on my LCD screen. No white blob, no blurred streaks. I was content.
Later, I noticed spots in my pictures after loading these to my computer. Spots! Two of them, dark and noticeable. See them in the far right of the above photo and to the very bottom? Which means I have dirt in my camera, perhaps on the lens as well and that annoys me to no end. However, I learned from a good friend of mine's husband who also is a photography geek like me how to clean those spots but I just hate having to mess with the insides of my camera. I mean we are talking about the innards of my camera, where the magic happens and I certainly don't want to mess that part up. In reality, removing those dust spots are not as difficult as I make it sound. I'll have to tell you about that some other time, if that interests you or not. Does any of this interest you? Mom, quit shaking your head. You too sis. Actually just quit shaking your head altogether at what I am talking about here. 
A trick I learned over on Flickr, through one of the many informative photography groups, is how to bring the moon closer without having to sell all of your Tyco stock to purchase a $12K telephoto lens. Course it rather helps if you have a fairly decent photo editing program on your computer. I have Photoshop Elements 6 and it is a very fun way to make good pictures great and great pictures look awesome. This picture is the exact same shot as the one with those annoying spots. With my zoom tool, I did just that, zoomed in, brought the moon closer and then cropped the picture to hold this image and voila! I captured the moon. To me this shot is ehhh, okay. I want more than okay, but it is certainly an improvement over the first two mess of pictures I took above. It's pretty clear, not too noisy(grainy) and has some details that you wouldn't otherwise have noticed if I hadn't zoomed in.
So this weekend I am hoping for some clear skies, patience on my part and capturing many moon shots! But first, I need to clean up those annoying spots!
