I started thinking about the moon the other night at my camera club meeting when guest judge Jeff Burkholder told us that moonlight is white not blue as was often depicted by Hollywood films in the early days of color film. Blue gels were added to the lighting to simulate moonlight which is not blue at all but rather a reflection of sunlight. So, last night, as I sat in the cell phone lot at the Sacramento International Airport, waiting to pick up friends returning from Hawaii, I decided to take some photos of the almost full moon. I used the Sunny 16 rule to set my camera (Jeff taught me about the Sunny 16 rule when I took a class from him a few years back) but I wasn’t happy with the focus–too much camera shake so I used my monopod, part of my Cullman tripod, for the first time. I’ve had the tripod for more than two years. Sometimes it takes a while for me to get around to using something!
This is a color shot of the moon. I changed the setting from f/16, shutter speed 1/100 to f11, 1/320 to help with camera shake and I think the tripod would have been a better choice than the monopod for a moon shot because I have had much more sharply focused moon shots using the tripod. But you need to try things to find out what works. Also, this is a bit underexposed. I should have slowed the shutter speed just a tad.
