Full Moon - February 7, 2009

We had a balmy-for-February-in-St. Louis night and a full moon almost directly overhead.  My last shots with a ball head and aluminum tripod were unusable because they were too soft.  I figured that the long focal length was magnifying vibration from the mirror.  Ordinarily I'd use mirror lock-up, but I was trying to catch a shot between fast moving clouds and figured the lag time would be too great.  With a little digging, I uncovered one of my wood tripods to see if would dampen the vibration.

Capture: Nikon D700, ISO 200, Celestron 1,000mm mirror telescope, f/11 @ 1/200s (using sunny 16 rule +1 stop), supported by a Zone VI wood tripod and  Manfrotto pan/tilt head, Nikon MC-30 shutter release.

Processing: Lightroom 2, Nikon D700 Landscape preset, 1:1 crop.