Full Moon Outing

Last week, a colleague of mine organised a full moon outing. Basically, you go and walk in the mountain with for only light source the full moon.

This was for me the opportunity to try some very low light shoots but as the main goal was not taking pictures I didn't have the luxury of the time to set up a tripod. Actually, the group was quite sporty so even stopping 30 secs for a picture was too much and I was always running after them not to get lost.

I learnt something interesting with the AF. In those conditions, the phase AF gave up with or without assist beam (a ST-E2 in this case) and I was with my 50mm f/1.4 so a lot of light was getting in. Manual focus was impossible (too dark and no time). In live view, to my big surprise, the contrast focus worked very well. Not fast as you can imagine but fast enough for my subjects. Some shots were OOF but most of the time I could see it before taking the pictures.

Here are a couple of shots from that night:

http://photos.deghaye.com/photos/i-L...-L4MKsh6-M.jpg

http://photos.deghaye.com/photos/i-N...-Nq4gRCb-M.jpg

I underexposed them by 1 stop to keep the moon-light atmosphere...

Looking forward to reading your comments and advice

Great work, Steph -- I'm certainly going to have to try this myself! I like seeing the starry sky in the images, so if it was me I'd probably try to get more of the sky in the scene. But I really love how the sharp light provides an other-worldly effect to the scene. I'm curious... what aperture/shutter/ISO did you use?

Wow, really great shots. Nicely done. Moonlight shooting is tough under the best of circumstances. Trying to do it in the cold while also trying to keep up with a group is really making it difficult. You did well to get those pics.

Great couple of shots, there is an animated feel to these images, that I really like.

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Originally Posted by Steve U

Great couple of shots, there is an animated feel to these images, that I really like.

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Agreed. I was going to say they feel almost like an oil painting. Nice choices on the -1 exposure and the 1/25 shutterspeed.

Thanks everybody :o

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Originally Posted by Jonathan Huyer

I'm curious... what aperture/shutter/ISO did you use?

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both were f/1.4, ISO 25600. As mentioned by Kayaker, the first one is 1/25 sec and the second one is 1/15. I think one has access to the picture details by clicking on them and clicking the Show details button in Smugmug.

When I click on the images, I'm taken to a page that says

This gallery, "Full moon Jura 13", requires a password to continue

Hint: "Name of the dish"

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Originally Posted by Sean Setters

Hint: "Name of the dish"

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Hmmm...that makes me both hungry and curious.....did you try jambalaya???

I was curious as to the EXIF info too and right clicked on the first image, saved to my computer, and then viewed the EXIF information under the image properties/detail.

Steph - That does look like a fun evening.

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Originally Posted by Kayaker72

Hmmm...that makes me both hungry and curious.....did you try jambalaya???

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Nope... That's a dish that involves more cheese... as it has to be to be successful in the region. Anyway, I created a public gallery for the TDP posts so I won't have the problem of (1) smallish pictures in posts of pictures not in Smugmug and (2) access to EXIF.

@conropl: Yes, it was. Highly recommended. In West Michigan, you have the moon but I've got no idea whether you have mountains and snow... I'll have a look in Google Map.

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Originally Posted by Steph

@conropl: Yes, it was. Highly recommended. In West Michigan, you have the moon but I've got no idea whether you have mountains and snow... I'll have a look in Google Map.

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We get snow, but no mountains:(. Pretty flat around here.
This year the snow has been scarce (although we have been finally getting some the last couple of weeks).