Mastodawn

Lord Marc Grondin Mar 1, 2022

Well i'm still on a mission to get a nice shot of the moon. Latest attempts are still blurry. I'm not 100% sure why this time.

Aperture too wide? Maybe(most probable?). I don't recall what it was at but it did not think it was wide open.

Tripod not stable enough? I did notice it was semi wobbly. I think I should have waited to release the shutter until after I had moved my head/face away from the camera. If I recall I would release shutter then move away. Maybe my moving away cause it to shake a little.

Old film/End of film? Film was expired(Dec 2021) and these where the last 4 shots on the roll.

It was also windy this night. The clouds where moving so maybe that's all it is. Too much motion for the long exposure needed.

This was on Pancro 400. Maybe it's just not good for night shots. Still they are kinda interesting to look at at small scale.

#Photography #FilmIsNotDead #35mm

The daytime walk in the park shots I got turned out nice tho. Some of those to go up later.

The Ghost of Émilie Mar 1, 2022

@[email protected] @Alonealastalovedalongthe @[email protected]

#world #art #photography_discussion #thebiologist1117photos

## How the Blurry Photo of Your Cat Relates to These Moon Photos

You posted a photo of your cat a while ago that was blurry, and I was trying to figure out why.

Normally, I can tell the difference between motion blur and focus blur, but it was difficult to tell in that photo.

## Causes of Motion Blur in Photos

In the second moon photo, the one where the clouds are covering the moon, it looks like motion blur to me. When I've taken photos at night with a low shutter speed, I've noticed that even if I think I was perfectly still, the photo can still come out blurry (because of my breathing or my body shaking). Yours shouldn't have that because you were using a tripod.

There's actually two types of motion blur. There's the one where you shake the camera, and there's the one where what you're taking a photo of moves.

Usually you can tell the difference because if your camera shook, the whole photo is blurry, and if the thing you were taking a photo of moved, just that thing is blurry.

It can be a combinyation of both, of course.

The mirror system in your camera, as well as automatic stabilization (your camera probably doesn't have that, but mine does) can cause blurry (motion blur blurry) photos at 1 - 4 second exposures.

When the mirror flips up, it can cause the camera to shake, which makes the photo blurry. You can compensate for that by using a faster shutter speed or flipping up the mirror before taking the photo.

In the photo where the clouds are off to the side, that looks more like focus blur to me. The solution for that would be to be very careful when manually focusing the lens. I usually twist the focus ring so the entire viewfinder looks out of focus, and then I slowly twist it back and wait for the object in the viewfinder to "just" pop into focus. After I do that, I take the photo.

## Possible Solution

Perhaps you could take "test" photos? I know it's a bit of a waste of film, but when you're taking a photo, maybe you could stop down the shutter speed to see if it comes out any better. That might underexpose parts of the photo though.

## Using Reference Points

In the end, you want to know "what works best." Maybe you find that the photos come out better if you stop down the shutter speed from the camera's recommended exposure, or maybe you find that stopping down the aperture from the camera's recommended exposure works better (or maybe the opposite?)

I think it's good to have a reference point. You start with XYZ settings, and then you change them in a specific way, and you see if that works better or worse than the reference point (how the photo came out before). If they do come out better, you make those settings your new reference point.

So you might start with "1/60, f/5.6, ISO 100" as your reference (they can be any numbers, but you want them to be close as possible to what you think will work). If those settings work well in a given condition, you use that as your reference point, and you try using a faster shutter speed from that point (or whatever you want) and you see if that works better.

It should look like this in your mind:

WORSE / BETTER / WORSE

You want to be chasing where it's better (it will be worse on either side of "better." I know that's pretty abstract, but it's what I use).

It's a process of changing your reference point to see what works best, and knowing the outer limits of what you can get away with (Can I underexpose by a stop here, or would it ruin the photo? Can I overexpose it?)

In darker situations, it might be a bit safer to overexpose than underexpose. You don't know exactly what'll work but you want to stay "on the safer side" if you know where that is. So part of learning to do that is predicting what "safe settings are."

Even if the exposure isn't perfect, that gives you information that you can use for next time you take a photo (try to use safer settings next time).

I hope any of that made sense. For me, it's about knowing what settings make sense in the camera, and trying to stay on the safer side if possible.

One thing more:

Even if it doesn't come out right, having a photo is always better than not having a photo. 🍀

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss This one is close to 4,500 characters long (as you can see, I use a content warning for these because it annoyings people on microblogging platforms to have their entire feed eaten by one post).

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss *warnings

Rokosun Jul 15, 2022

@thebiologist1117
I think now these microblogging platforms like mastodon truncates long post under a "show more" button. I've seen this even on Friendica, I don't know if its an addon or something, but I believe I can set the truncation limit myself.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss They do, but there's a problem with that. People don't know how long your post is just from that... They might think it's "slightly longer" than the average post, open it, and it takes them 5 minutes to scroll past because they can't minimize it again.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss Content warnings let them minimize it again... at least on Mastodon and Misskey.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss That happened to me, by the way. I opened a truncated blog post (it came directly from a photography blog on the web) and it took FOREVER to scroll past. It was like an actual book.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss If they had used a content warning, I could've seen that it was too long to scroll past, and minimized it again. Also, this was a bot doing this, so that bot is probably still out there wreaking havoc on people's timelines.

Rokosun Jul 15, 2022

@thebiologist1117
If I write a big post that's a little too long than usual then I'll CW it, but I usually don't put CWs for anything other than offensive stuff, spoilers, etc. So unless its a pretty huge post I usually don't CW it.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss Hashtags are also great for connecting replies together... A lot of times, I would reply to Marc but still want my "photography tips" posts to show up together... so I would use that Photography_Discussion hashtag... I also made that because a lot of people on the photography hashtag just post photos, but they don't really talk about them...

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss The only problem with that is that hashtag federation is a lot more shaky than post and reply federation, so I stopped doing it.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss Nowadays, I prefer to group posts / replies together with threads... so I might have a "photography thread" instead of a photography hashtag....

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss I also use this #x hashtag to make posts searchable... Bookmarks are probably better for that, but I like how it's public.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss I do that because... sometimes I'll post a lot, and I'll lose all of my old threads in the sea of posts on my profile.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss I could also do what FediTips does and post links to my threads... and maybe pin that to my profile, but I prefer not to use HTTP links on fedi, since I don't want people to feel pressured to leave their home instance.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss Plus... generally... the web sucks for privacy. Most sites are bloated and are overflowing with surveillance capitalism trackers. #Web

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss fedi is the only place it's safe. 🥹

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss And even then, it's not really safe because it's so easy to accidentally open a surveillance capitalism site.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss Like birbsite. #Birbsite

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss Or... even worse... Reddit.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

@futureisfoss Good morning (for when you wake up!) #GoodMorningClub

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

Another weakness of hashtags is that they pollute your posts... It just looks meh when all of your posts have hashtags.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 15, 2022

That's why I use them sparingly... I used to use 3 hashtags for every post, and that got old so fast... because I had to come up with accurate hashtags for every post, and that took a while.

The Ghost of Émilie Jul 16, 2022

Oh, and now I put them all the way at the end of my posts, and only if I want to make them searchable or if I feel the post has a lot of value.

The Ghost of Émilie

@futureisfoss For a while, I tried directly referencing hashtags and mentions in posts. I much preferred that to having my tags "dangle on the sides" of my posts, but it still felt forced. Example: https://mk.nixnet.social/notes/8xw50s3h59

Émilie (@thebiologist1117)

Hi people of #photos! This is a photo by Frankie. I edited it, and am posting it with his permission. You can find Frankie @[email protected]. ☺️ (📎1)

NixNet Social (Misskey edition!)