Yes that old moon is still 238,857 miles off but I'm still chasing it with my little hand held camera and a rather pathetic 5x optical zoom. And still I delude myself that I can capture those magnificent features that the guys with their DSLRs, tripods and huge telescopic zooms can. Its classic obsessional behaviour and a current which runs right through my life. If I had the cash I would probably go out and spend thousands on camera equipment just to get a clearer image of something that doesn't really matter. But that's me. I could even copy the guys who use a telescope but that seems to me impure. Were I to do that I would be as well photographing a picture out of a magazine or book from NASA.
Anyway I did get an improvement last night after spending 45 minutes fiddling in the darkness of my bedroom with the window open- it only opens about halfway. Hanging half out atop of pile of clothes and other rubbish I tried all sorts to get that photograph in my head but all I got in return were distant blurred bright white blobs on black. Finally after almost 100 images I discovered that manual mode using the digital zoom got me the best I was ever going to get and that is it above. It has detail which are unfortunately in big pixel chunks. It strange when you see this dominating body in front of you that it turns to a tiny pin prick on the camera's LCD even with the zoom. The shot above is actually blended but taken from the same night. the window shot had a tiny white dot shot without the zoom and the moon is with the zoom blended on top.
My wife bought me a book for £6, retails at £20, on digital photography masterclass which she hopes will keep me occupied. Its very sparse in instruction and I don't think I'll finish it as the new David Bailey but its interesting. Also only having a compact a lot of it is irrelevant to me but maybe one day. Each short chapter ends with an assignment so I have decided to do one a week in the hope of having a purpose to get out. This first week has been night photography which I just cannot get the hang of but no worries as it will soon be something different next week. This moon capture will do as the culmination of my efforts for week 1. God knows what I'll be putting myself through next week.
