Night by TJ

I found Night a fascinating topic as I really had to get to know my camera and is functionality to get the best shot possible. I remember trying to photograph the moon almost a year ago just after I had got the camera, and how poor my first attempt was. I made elementary mistakes such as holding the camera by hand and using the intelligent auto feature, so this time I planned the effort in much more detail. Using my trusty tripod meant that there would be no camera shake giving me a much better chance to get a shot in focus. Although my Lumix FZ45 doesn't have a automatic shutter cable option, I was able to use the timer to make sure the camera was perfectly still when the shot was taken. I attached my tele-conversion lens, which allowed me to get a good close up shot. I read up and then  experimented with shutter settings so as not to over or under expose the picture, and took the photo with an exposure setting of 1/60 second and an ISO setting of 100. The picture was taken 24 hours before the actual full moon. In editing I used a slight blue tint on the photo which added that final missing piece to the picture.

I had so many ideas for this topic and even bought a high powered hand torch to try out the idea in the top photo of photographing the woods at night. To do this I used a 15 second exposure setting giving me time to wave the torch around filling the foreground with light. The second photo was my attempt to capture car trail lights, which I achieved by setting the exposure time to 6 seconds.