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A stranger at the Griffith Observatory changed how I see the moon
I was there last month trying to get a shot of the moon with my basic DSLR, feeling a bit stuck. An older guy with a huge telescope setup saw me and said, 'You're fighting the light pollution, kid. Try a 1/250 shutter, not what the auto mode says.' He let me look through his scope at the crater Tycho, and the detail was insane. I never realized how much you could pull out of a city sky with just a small tweak. What's the best piece of simple advice you've gotten from another stargazer?
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mason_fisher27d ago
That tip about fighting light pollution is spot on. I learned to ditch the camera's auto white balance and set it to daylight or tungsten. It keeps the moon from looking like a weird orange blob and actually looks like moonlight.
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ruby_henderson3627d ago
My uncle's advice was to just look UP more often, which sounds dumb but actually works. @mason_fisher has the right idea about white balance, my first moon shots looked like a cheesy pizza. The best simple tip I ever got was to let my eyes adjust for a full 20 minutes in total darkness, no phone light. You start seeing stars you didn't even know were there.
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