Blue Moon

ISO: 400

Exposure: 1/640 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 200mm (cropped)

 

ISO: 400

Exposure: 1/5 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Focal Length: 150mm

Don't expect the moon to be blue, it was as usual white :). This was the second full moon in a month, on 31st December 2009, called blue moon. There was also a lunar eclipse that day in some parts of the world, but was not visible in Austin. The moon was really bright to the human eye, may not be evident in the photographs as the metering system adapts to the available light. Being the eve of new year, I wanted to head downtown for photographing fireworks... but it was too cold that I dropped the plan and settled on shooting the moon.

Had to wait a while in my patio for the fast moving clouds to clear for a good view of the moon. My first few shots had the moon completely white, so I set the metering to spot metering from matrix metering - then the moon had more surface details. Even at the maximum zoom of 200mm the moon was only about 5% of the frame. So I suggest to use a higher zoom lens or use teleconverters. I have cropped the first picture to the point that it does not look too bad in terms of resolution :). When I was just about to wind up the clouds started reappearing hurray! Took few photographs before the moon hid behind the clouds.