PhotoProject :: In Search of the Blue Hour

The past two night have had the classic crescent moon close to a bright planet Venus not long after sunset. This is the blue hour when you can get some wonderful photos as the sky is still partly light and the deep sky is still a little blue not yet black. However this is the time of extended long exposures, so A tri[od is pretty essential, and keeping if vibration free can be a hassle. First step is turning off the anti-shake and the second trick is to use the self timer (I just use the 2 second delay). The other big issue at night is focusing, which can be a challenge for most autofocus system, so it if better to manually focus.Finally there is lost of advice about exposure setting for night scenes,and it a compromise between higher ISO (and inevitable higher noise) and lower F-stops (so decreasing depth of focus) and slow shutter speeds (giving high risk of camera movement blur). These compromises are not so well handled by the light meters in most camera, so it is usually much better to work in manual mode and take a few test shots.A similar configuration of the moon and venus will exist during the blue hour for the next couple of days.