The Moon Is Meh

Last night, after some dinner guests left once they'd contracted the Wuhan Flu from us, I went outside and tried some moon photography with both the aging Nikon D60 Artillery Piece and the Fujifilm X-T10. It was meh.

My best shot came from the Fuji. Meh.

First, I was right about the Nikon. It is dying. It was unable to produce focused shots with the telephoto lens, even on manual mode, allegedly focused at infinity. It's developing other quirks having to do with the menu and settings as well. The error it threw during our recent night sky photography session was due to the autofocus feature, but disabling that did no good. I could take shots, but they were all blurry.

Sadly, that leaves me with the Fuji, a fussy, complicated, ergonomic disasterpiece of a camera. It gets good shots, once you wrestle it to the ground like a stubborn child with an unauthorized candy bar. 

I think it's time to get a new camera. The local shop has the latest Nikon consumer-level one on sale with the two-lens package. It's a pretty nice system. I'm debating whether or not I want to move to Canon as they have the best macro lenses and I do enjoy the odd flower, insect or lizard photoshoot. Oh well. No rush as the Fuji will work for now.

Finally, my post yesterday about being able to shoot night sky objects from the comfort of a home, mobile or fixed, was spot on. My first moon shots were totally blown out as I was using the settings for a moonless night sky. I ended up sitting in front of this desktop PC, looking up moon photography shutter speeds and apertures. They were way different than Milky Way shots. In the end, this photo was taken at 1/60 seconds with an aperture of 11 and ISO 200. 

Being able to go back and forth from a lit room with a good computer to the dark outdoors was key to learning. I should have done that long ago, before I started these experiments. You can't learn much if your lab notebook and texts are 90 minutes away from your laboratory. 

I'm much more familiar with the Fuji now and more comfortable with night photography in general. Wife kitteh is going on a girls' vacation in a few weeks. I'll use that opportunity for a longer cruise into the desert to get some real Milky Way shots, assuming the moon cooperates and isn't up the whole night.