Thursday, February 21, 2008

Frozen toes for nothing

Unless you don't listen to the news or read a newspaper or watch TV or visit other websites, you'll know that last night was the last full lunar eclipse that North America is going to see until 2010. I thought I'd celebrate this celestial event by taking some great photos.

I wasn't alone - my good friends George and Carolyn were up for it as well. So at 8:30 last night, we got all bundled up and headed to the great outdoors.

We drove north of the city to the Optimists Club. We hiked into a wide field and set up shop. Tripod, long lens, wireless shutter remote and patience - what more could you need, right?

I took photos and photos of the moon. I used all sorts of exposures and a wide range of apertures, hoping to get a nice crisp shot. It was cold, crispy cold out, but it didn't feel so bad with good friends around. Around 11:30 we packed up and headed to a Tims to warm up and shortly after that I was home.

I took a look at my photos after work today. I must say I'm pretty disappointed. They are all 'soft'; there isn't one that is crisp. All that time in the cold for nothing.

I don't know why none of my shots turned out. Perhaps I need to buy a lens of higher quality. Perhaps I left the shutter open too long, allowing the moon and earth to move a bit. Perhaps the lens had trouble focusing. I don't know.

Anyways - in case some of you were really excited about seeing a photo of the eclipse, here is the best one I could muster from last night.

1 comment:

George said...

You are not alone. Not a single photo of mine turned out either. Even when I shot with high ISO (to allow for a faster shutter), it still was not sharp. I suspect that the auto-focus did not work properly since the moon was not very bright.