Pushing this one a bit, but you know what today is? No, I’m not talking about that bogus gif holiday – please. You weren’t fooled by that, were you? I’m talking about Shoot The Moon Twice In Different Phases Day, and I’m happy to announce that I was successful in this.
First off, I was out about 1 AM, and did this one.
Really, nice detail and contrast on that one, considering that a few nights ago, even at this time of night the moon was pretty yellow from the smoke of the west coast wildfires. I even did a few video clips, because something was flying around up there against the moon, though the focus was on the moon and not the somethings, so they’re too unfocused for good detail, but that means they were probably significantly closer than the moon (well, duryea!) and thus not very big. Actually, it means they were significantly closer than the focus point of that lens for the moon, effectively infinity, meaning they were closer than 100 meters or so. Anyway, not worth putting up the clips, but come on by if you want to see them.
And then, about 11 PM, I did the next.
Well, okay, technically the same phase, which is waning gibbous, but let’s be real: This is almost as far apart as you can have phases shot with 24 hours of each other, so you’ll just have to cope. Closer to moonrise on this one, even though it was well off the horizon, but a bit of yellow coming through, and whether that was normal humidity or more smoke, I’m not telling.
Both of these were with the Tamron 150-600 at 600mm, with the Tokina 2x teleconverter, so roughly 1000mm, and yes, they’re damn sharp. To prove it, we’ll see a section of the earlier photo at full resolution:
I’m not complaining about that at all.
But here’s something interesting. Go back and carefully compare the north poles of each photo, which are illuminated notably different. I suspect this is because some leaves were getting into the frame for the earlier one, since it was not far off disappearing into the trees from my vantage. Initially, I was confused by this, but then remembered I could see the leaves by naked eye, close to the moon, but they didn’t appear in the viewfinder. They might have been, but not distinctly enough for me to be aware at that time, and only visible in comparison with today’s shot (well, they’re both today’s shots, but later today’s shot, about 45 minutes ago.)
Anyway, gotta post this or I’m late, so word count will be lower than normal. You know, you really don’t have to look that relieved…