Blogging.

I SERIOUSLY need to start blogging again. Seriously. I have no idea how I got so far off track. Oh, yeah. Farm town. hmmmm.
Here's a couple of pics I'd like to share.
I've become entranced with taking pictures of the moon. I've been playing with f-stops and shutter speeds and I'm figuring it out. Here are some of the pics.

This first pic I took using my tripod on top of the parking garage at work and using the "night" setting on my camera. I think it was a fluke that it turned out, but I was very excited that my camera had this range.


The reason I think that one was a fluke is because this is what I got the next night taking one at my house with the camera on the tripod out in the middle of my street and still using the "night" preset setting.


I spent some time thinking about it and thought that maybe it was because at my house it is so dark and at the parking garage you have the lights of the city surrounding you. So I tried again at the parking garage but wasn't able to duplicate that first picture. I got the bright light effect of the second picture.

I found that I could always get good detail taking pictures of the day moon, however. This one was taken in early evening before it got dark.


I spent some time playing with the camera in different darkness situations and learning how to set the fstop and shutter speed and then tried again. Originally I just tried setting the shutter speed manually. I got good detail, but the moon is so dark. This one is taken from atop the garage.


So I played a little more. In this one I set both the fstop and the shutter speed manually. But it still turned out quite dark. I knew there must be some way to duplicate that first picture that apparently was quite accidental. This one was taken from my driveway.


Finally, I just took pictures, one at a time, using all different combinations of fstop and shutter speed, until finally...

One turned out


And then another one even closer


So then I tried to get a picture of the moon surrounded by the clouds that were drifting in, but I got this...just the moon.


No matter what combination I tried, I either got ones like the one above, or ones like this, where the clouds show, but the moon is a bright light. So I need to work on that technique and maybe read up about how people go about getting those lovely pictures of the moon surrounded by clouds.


These two pictures are of the planet that was to the left and below the moon and according to the starguide that I use must be Jupiter. Obviously, my camera does not have quite THAT capability, but it was fun trying. I couldn't get my tripod steady enough on the recycling can which is why you see the movement in the light. But hey! I took a picture of the planet Jupiter. haha. I'm sure enjoying my new camera.