Friday 30 October 2015

Super Blood Moon

I bought a new camera quite a long time ago, either shortly after Christmas or for my birthday, I can't remember. It might have been for neither occasion actually, but either way it was thanks to my Dad. He has been wanting to buy me a DSLR for a while as he is enthusiastic about photography and can see I have quite a good eye for it. Unfortunately I have been so busy I haven't been able to play with it as much as I would have liked (not helped by the fact that I had my camera stolen whilst I was on holiday once so I am paranoid to take it with me). Part of the deal with the camera I bought (a Fujifilm X-M1 that I love!) was a free promotional zoom lens. I hadn't had a chance to use it until I saw that a blood moon was coming up. In order to take pictures of the moon you need a pretty good zoom lens and mine hit the lowest range of recommended zoom capacities so what a perfect place for a trial. After a quick research online for the recommended camera settings to take moon shots, and then a scour through my camera manual to work out how to set it up correctly, it had just gone midnight and I only had two hours to go to start watching the eclipse and try out my evenings education. I thought I was too excited to sleep but ...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

A couple of hours later, I woke up to my alarm, thick with sleep, feeling slightly ill but looking forward to taking some photos. And click, click, change settings, click, click, move camera, jump into bed -  it is chilly, jump out, click, click and the spectacle was over. Well it was half way. I watched the eclipse from the start to the blood moon, but then didn't watch in un-eclipse or whatever the scientific term is. I needed some sleep.

I was pretty excited the next day to see how my photos turned out, and apart from the slightly out of focus blood moon (only 30 years to wait for another chance at that) I was pretty pleased with my first attempt at taking pictures with my zoom lens, using the manual settings, and taking pictures of the moon. All, in all, a good nights work!



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