It was a very busy and fast paced sunset at Rocky Mountain National Park RMNP a few days ago. Most of you will have seen my Elk shot, and I just posted the Lightning shot yesterday that followed the sunset. I still need to process a shot or two of the sunset itself, but for now I will skip to when the stars came out and moon came out from behind the clouds.
This is from the Alpine Visitor Center up at the top of Trail Ridge. Behind the Visitor Center there is a cool ridge that still is spotted and striped with snow. So I thought it would make for a cool foreground. The moon was very bright being a little over 50%. So I knew it wasn't going to be ideal for shooting the Milky Way, so the MW wasn't really my goal though of course I had hoped to get it in a shot or two. My main goal was to use the moon and the moonlight to shoot some night scenes.
Knowing that the moon will turn into a moon-star by shooting above f5.6 at night, I set my camera for f8 as the star is a bit better defined. I had my camera in Aperture priority so I could let it shoot away as it was 44 degrees out up there. The 44 degrees was a bit of a shock considering I had been trail running earlier in the afternoon in near 90 degree temps.
My settings:
ISO 1600
f8
25 sec Shutter Speed
Aperture Priority (Set to +2 Exposure Comp I think)
The Milky Way is a bit washed out, which is to be expected because of the brightness of the moon. My desire was to keep it as natural as possible, and just to show the cool interplay between the moon, stars and Milky Way. The ground layer was about this bright visually as the moon was pretty bright, the stars could be seen, along with a dim Milky Way, though you had to look for the Milky Way to see it.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
This is from the Alpine Visitor Center up at the top of Trail Ridge. Behind the Visitor Center there is a cool ridge that still is spotted and striped with snow. So I thought it would make for a cool foreground. The moon was very bright being a little over 50%. So I knew it wasn't going to be ideal for shooting the Milky Way, so the MW wasn't really my goal though of course I had hoped to get it in a shot or two. My main goal was to use the moon and the moonlight to shoot some night scenes.
Knowing that the moon will turn into a moon-star by shooting above f5.6 at night, I set my camera for f8 as the star is a bit better defined. I had my camera in Aperture priority so I could let it shoot away as it was 44 degrees out up there. The 44 degrees was a bit of a shock considering I had been trail running earlier in the afternoon in near 90 degree temps.
My settings:
ISO 1600
f8
25 sec Shutter Speed
Aperture Priority (Set to +2 Exposure Comp I think)
The Milky Way is a bit washed out, which is to be expected because of the brightness of the moon. My desire was to keep it as natural as possible, and just to show the cool interplay between the moon, stars and Milky Way. The ground layer was about this bright visually as the moon was pretty bright, the stars could be seen, along with a dim Milky Way, though you had to look for the Milky Way to see it.
All comments are welcome,
Jim