When the Moon Hits your Eye

When I decide to flex my photography muscles it’s almost always with portraits or products. Lately though I’ve been inspired by my brother who takes incredible night sky photos using his telescope and some hefty equipment and software.
I don’t have anything fancy to help capture the stars but when I looked out my front window tonight and saw the big beautiful moon staring down at me, I took an opportunity to go out and graba  few quick snaps with what I have.

I set up my Canon EOS D700 (also known as the T5i) and a 55-250 mm lens. This lens is one of the kit lenses and while I prefer to use a nice 50mm for most things, I figured this was a good time to get to know the former.

I played around with my F stop, exposure, and ISO and the photos I’ll show here all ended up with very similar settings. I only managed to get a few sets before the clouds rolled in but I can definitely see the allure that drew my brother to photographing the night sky. It’s peaceful, calming, and solitary.

This one was f8 – 1/30 – 1600

This one was f8 – 1/2000 -800

This one was f 5.6 – 1/2000 – 800

This one was f 7.1 – 1/4000 – 1600

Then things started to get a bit fuzzy. I thought perhaps it was my settings which were f16 – 1/4000 – 6400 but it turns out that the clouds were rolling in in a big way.

I took a few shots as the clouds covered the moon and played a bit with the bulb exposure before bringing it all inside. Next time I will take a few more than 3 shots per burst as the cloud cover makes for some fun animated gif action.

Not bad for a spur of the moment shoot from a girl with no scope.
Most of the images are fuzzy and not at all detailed once you try to crop in BUT it was a really fun exercise in getting to know my camera, playing around with exposures, and just plain being out in the warm Texas night.