191/365 - Jim - Once in a Blue Moon

( f/11 200mm 1/250 sec ISO 200 Nikon D300 )

It was getting late and I hadn't taken any photos yet. I noticed the moon was full so I headed out to get a shot. I made it blue by setting my white balance to tungsten. I've taken many shots of the moon over the last couple years, but haven't gotten any closer to 200mm. There are telescopes that have adapters that you can connect a Nikon camera to for photographs, but that can be pretty expensive just for moon shots. I would like to try a Phoenix 650-2600mm Telephoto Lens that sells for around $250. The aperture is f/8 - 16 so it wouldn't be very useful for many things other than moon shots, but would still be fun.

161/365 - Jim - Moon gets in way of perfect V

( f/2.8 70mm 1/160 sec ISO 800 Nikon D300 )

It was perfect. I went out on the deck and heard geese in the distance. I quickly set my camera to get a better shutter speed by turning up the ISO and setting it to Shutter priority. The geese went right over top of me and I snapped away. You might be thinking "Wow, and the moon just happened to be there too and you just happened to get an awesome exposure." Nope, I faked you out. I did take a nicely exposed photo of the moon, but the moon is bright, so the sky was very black. But how did you get the moon in there then? My camera has a photo merge feature. I take 2 pictures, choose them, and hit merge. It's very simple and works really well with moon photos because of the sky being all black. Here is a tip for anyone with a Nikon DSLR, zoom in on the moon as far as you can go and take a photo. Then take another photo of a cityscape zoomed out. Merge the two and you have an unreal looking HUGE moon. And unless they read this, they won't know you cheated.