Shutter speed and brainiac birds

We stopped for a latte last night, and saw a nearly-full moon over the shopping center.  I had my camera with me (why are you not surprised?) so I leaned it on the edge of the open van window and took this picture on Automatic.  I can see the bricks of the Starbucks store very easily, but the moon is completely washed-out.

At this point, my vast amounts of photography training kicked in.  Er, I mean, I remembered the discussions on shutter speed, aperture, and ISO I read in Photographing Your Family.

There was too much light hitting the sensor, and I could fix that by going into manual mode and selecting a fast shutter speed.  I could adjust the other settings, too, if it turned out to be necessary, but I liked the result I got just by changing the shutter speed to 1/40.

I think it’s kind of fun to only see little glimpses of the buildings.

I wanted more detail on that tiny speck of a moon, though… zoooooooooooooooooom!

Ooh, nice close-up.  20x zoom, baby.  (Have I mentioned before how much I love my camera?)

So anyway, the moral of the story is that am capable of reading something, remembering it, and putting it to use when necessary.  That’s a relief!

Oh, and the other moral is, use a speedy shutter when snapping photos of the moon.

I got another chance to pull out the camera about 15 minutes later, when this insomniac bird followed us into the house.  He freaked-out all over the living room, finally perching on the dining room blinds for a rest.  The lighting wasn’t so good here, and I didn’t have a chance to compensate because someone was nagging: “put the camera down and help me get this thing out of the house!”

Some people just don’t understand art