Howl at the Moon

Yep, more moon shots.

I was driving home tonight as saw the coolest red moon hanging low in the sky. I broke a few traffic laws to try and get home as fast as I could (hey, they're meant to be guidelines, right?), but couldn't get home fast enough to catch the wicked red shade. By the time I grabbed my camera and got outside, it was more yellowish than anything.

These shots were hand-held with my 70-300mm lens (which has image stabilization). To try and avoid the street lights, I drove down the road a bit and took these from a spot away from street lights. I was only a half mile or so from home, though, so there was still (sadly) plenty of skyline/ambient light. I thought it might help a bit with the noise to get away from the houses. It doesn't seem to have helped much.

On the ones colored au naturale, I increased the blacks one notch in Lightroom to counteract the noise. On the others, I left them unprocessed (except for cropping) and switched to grayscale mode.

This moon is waning gibbous with 86% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

Butterfly

Unexpected photo op - This morning, I was looking out my (home) office window for a bit, trying to motivate myself to get ready to leave for work. As I was organizing my pre-work agenda in my head (get dressed, stop at the bank, stop at the post office to mail the video card I just sold on ebay), I saw a big orange butterfly sitting on the yellow flowering bushes along the bank of the pond in my back yard.

I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs. He didn't stick around for long, but I was able to snag a couple shots:

Lunar Eclipse Photos

Last night, when I went to bed, I had decided that I was too tired to try and wake up in the middle of the night to view and photograph the total lunar eclipse, which was scheduled to go total at 4:52am. I fell sound asleep, until my cat started puking on my bed at 4:25am. Coincidence? I figured, at that point, since I'd already gotten out of bed to clean up cat puke, I might as well take the tripod outside and photograph the eclipse....

Here are a few of the pictures I got. I think I figured out the source of the noise in my blacks. It has got to be the bright street lights that backlight me. There is one bright light 2 doors down from my driveway, and many others lining my street. The longer exposures were doing well to enhance the moon, but the noise in the blacks would get worse and worse. It's practically like shooting in daylight, the street lights are so close by and so bright. So, I'm figuring that is it. Unfortunately, unlike my first quarter moon shots, upping the black levels in the photos obscures part of the shadowed moon, so you'll just have to live with the noise and not zoom in too close :) I didn't crop most of these, for that reason.

My general settings were:

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	0.8 sec (4/5)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	300 mm
ISO Speed:	200
Exposure Bias:	0/3 EV
Flash:	Flash did not fire

. Click any of them to see larger ones in Flickr, or view the set at Flickr.

The first 4 photos are the partial eclipse, and the last 2 are after the total eclipse:







Exactly 4:52am, the start time of the total eclipse:


4:53am

Lunar Eclipse Tonight

There's a lunar eclipse tonight. Where I live, the total eclipse will run from 4:52am to 6:23am. See the Sky and Telescope web site for details.

I've got a long day at work tomorrow, but I'm quite tempted to try and photograph this....

Upgrading the Canon Kit Lens

Here's some more food for thought on the topic of upgrading the Canon 18-55mm kit lens. CameraLabs.com has put together a nice video comparing 3 different Canon lenses, summarized nicely by DPS.

Lightning

After a few attempts this summer, I finally caught a shot of some lightning. We had some wicked storms roll through Chicago this past Thursday, and after I got home from work I couldn't resist grabbing the camera and trying to capture some of the amazing light show.

I didn't have time to brush up on my "how to shoot lightning" research, so I was guessing at camera settings. I used manual mode, set the focus to infinity, and used f/8 aperture with a shutter speed of 2.5 seconds. I had my long lens on, the 70-300mm with image stabilization. I think in future attempts I might want to go with a wide angle lens (though I don't have one yet! LOL - the kit lens 18-55mm that came with the Rebel is the widest angle I've got).

I vaguely recalled reading of a guy who would just set the camera on bulb mode and leave the shutter open for a couple minutes, then close and repeat. I tried longer shutter speeds like that, but there was a lot of flash lightning mixed in with the bolts, so it wasn't really working.

I was doing all of this from the safety of my bedroom, shooting from my window. This particular shot that I got was actually hand-held. I was pretty much pressing the camera between my body and the window, with the lens resting on the window sill. Eventually, I ran down to get my tripod, but by then most of the good lightning had passed.

I used Adobe Lightroom to fix the exposure a bit (it was overexposed), blacken the blacks, and add the purple tint. My free trial finally ran out on Lightroom, but I've enjoyed using it so much that I purchased it, along with the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby.

Camera:	Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:	2.5 sec (5/2)
Aperture:	f/8
Focal Length:	70 mm
ISO Speed:	100
Exposure Bias:	0/3 EV
Flash:	Flash did not fire

Choosing my next lens

Now that I've had some time to get to know my Canon Digital Rebel XTi, I'm starting to discover what it is I actually want to do with this camera, and see some of the limitations in the equipment I own. The flexibility of changing lenses is what finally solidified my decision to go with a dSLR camera, and as such, I'm starting to get a feel for what lenses I want (now that I'm getting a sense of what I want to do with this thing!)

SLRGear has an article called, "Your Second Lens." I'm much enjoying it, as I'm at the point where I'm thinking about my next lens purchase. As I expected from reading various reviews, the kit lens(18-55mm) that comes with the Rebel is so-so. The zoom range is nice (I think the saying would be, it's a nice walk-about lens), but at f/3.5-5.6 aperture, my biggest complaint is that it pretty much sucks for hand-holding indoors in available light. One thing I am loving about this camera versus my old point-n-shoots is taking photos in available light without a flash. I love the ambiance and the mood. But the kit lens makes it tough, as the long shutter speeds result in a lot of blur, sans-tripod.

The frustration I've encountered while photographing indoors makes me think that maybe a faster lens with a wider aperture is in order.

I'm not made of money, so I'm going to have to make some sacrifices - most notably in the fact that I'll be looking at third party lenses as well as lenses made specifically for dSLR's (meaning, not full frame compatible lenses).

Canon makes a reasonably priced fast zoom lens that is full frame compatible - the EF 17-40mm f/4L (their higher end glass, I believe, as denoted by the L) - but it's not as "fast" as some of the other options out there in the same price range, and if my desire is to shoot in lower lighting situations without a flash, then I should be looking for the fastest bang for my buck, right?

That brings me to the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 Di II LD Aspherical IF SP AF. Around the same price point ($450) - fast, and gets a 9.07 rating from SLRGear. To quote their review:

As you might expect, it figuratively mops the floor with Canon and Nikon's "kit" lenses.

I think this lens might be my next walk-about lens.

While a long telephoto zoom of 500mm is darned attractive for my love of shooting animals, the 70-300mm I bought is serving me well and is going to have to do, as those longer zooms are upwards of $1,400! One can dream, though...

Unfortunately for me, I'm also into shooting flowers, so a macro lens is in order. After reading the various reviews, I think the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM is the winner. It's within $100 or so of the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 SP AF (the runner-up, in my mind) and has USM to boot. It's also full-frame compatible, should I ever be in a situation to upgrade my camera body.

All in all, I still haven't decided which lens I'll buy next, but at least I have chosen one in each category! :)

Fun with Water

The happy water drop photo inspired me to try to get a happy water drop of my own! I wasn't quite as successful, but learned a bit for next time I try :)

First off, I took a lot of shots without the flash, and I just couldn't see the drops. In frustration, I switched to the close-up auto mode, and the flash popped up. OK, might as well try it... and, voila. Water drops. So I went back to aperture priority mode (I was copying settings from the happy water drop photo) and took a few more shots. I got a couple so-so shots - better than I thought I'd get, but not as good as I'd hoped, if that makes any sense!

Next time, I will start out using the flash, and will try some different settings. From the few shots I'm keeping, it seems my biggest problem is with focus. It's hard to focus on something as elusive as a water drop! What I ended up doing was setting the auto focus to one specific point, then got it to lock in a focus once. Then I switched to manual focus to maintain that focus setting. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

These were taken in my kitchen sink :)

Here are a couple of the shots I kept:

My favorite of them:


One that I think would have been better if I got the focus on the drop itself:


One that came out in close-up auto mode - it bumped up to ISO400 and is a bit too noisy to do anything with, but the splash is kinda cool:

Happy Waterdrop

This photo has inspired me to go fill my sink and try for a happy waterdrop of my own!

I will, of course, let you know how it goes :)

Iconic

What the Duck