Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/09/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]All: Last night, the moon caught my attention. You see, it was almost blood red... the colour being caused by smoke from the "Tripod" forest fire, in Washington State. The Tripod fire is an immense fire, being fought by 1500 fire fighters. There is no heavy equipment being used because of the incredibly rough terrain, but water bombers are being used extensively. By late Tuesday night, the fire was estimated at 147,095 acres (60,000 hectares) , nearly 230 square miles (600 square kilometers), an area roughly the size of Chicago. Three hours ago, The National Post reported: >...the Tripod Complex fire, which has been burning since July 24, >has engulfed more than 60,800 hectares and was estimated to be about >five kilometres from the B.C. border, south of Osoyoos, yesterday. >Both fires have been sending "huge amounts" of smoke "all over the >southern half of the province," said Rucker. For the last two days, we've had heavily overcast skies... but not a cloud around... it's all smoke, and when it drifts lower, the air is permeated with the smell of the world's largest campfire. And it has created the most unusual moon! The problem is that exposures must be kept to less than 1 second, at 1000mm, or motion from the earth will blur the photos. Because the moon's brilliance is so dimmed by the smoke, I tried both ISO 1600 minus 1EV = 3200 and ISO 1600 minus 2 EV = ISO 6400. At an effective ISO of 3200, the noise was significant, but because of the extreme nature of the shot, not too bad. A far bigger problem was the soft focus due to the thick smoke! At an effective ISO of 6400, the noise was terrible. However, you'll have to take my word for it, because when the shots are reduced to 400x600 pixels, the noise is lost in the compression and size. But, trust me, it was not usable. Anyway, if you're interested in seeing the moon as you seldom will... http://www3.telus.net/~telyt/Red_moon.htm Exposure was 0.7 seconds @ f5.6 (in truth, f11). Thanks for looking. --- David Young, Logan Lake, CANADA Wildlife Photographs: http://www.telyt.com/ Personal Web-pages: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt