What happened was, I went down to the dock in the dark, and took pictures that no phone-cam should ever be asked to take. You might be amused.

I was with my ten-year-old daughter; The sky was black but the moon was full, its shadows knife-edged, first moonshadows she’d ever seen. Its light, edging round the slope of our island, looked cool, only I didn’t have a “real” camera, just my Google Pixel. Hmm, I sense a challenge.

Here’s the unimproved all-the-defaults version, which has a bit of primitive poetry perhaps.

Moon over Keats Island

So for the first time I got serious with the manual controls on the Lightroom camera app; cranked the ISO up and the shutter speed down, held the phone against one of the dock pilings, and growled at the girl to stop bouncing.

Then I went inside and brought the heavy photo-edits.

Moon over Keats Island - improved

Up in the top left, in the sky? Those are stars! And if you enlarge it, angled striations in the black on the right side? Moonbeams!

It’s not actually, you know, a Good Picture. But exploring boundaries is fun, and they’re a little further out than I’d have thought.

Before I went up I shot the path of moon-reflections on the ocean. Which was, relatively, easy.

Moon reflection

I asked Lauren “Isn’t there a word for the path of the moon (or sun) in the water?” She poked around and came up with “moonglade” which has however been taken over by World of Warcraft. Someone once asked a German-speaker, who answered Mondstrahlbleichfolgenimmerwandererufer, but they may have been improvising.

I keep saying: Golden age of Photography, we’re in it.



Contributions

Comment feed for ongoing:Comments feed

From: John Cowan (Nov 12 2016, at 23:14)

Me, I like the unimproved version best.

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From: EricH (Nov 13 2016, at 11:08)

I think you've owned both the Nexus 5X and the Pixel -- does the Pixels' compass work notably better than the 5x's? I have the 5x and the compass is a cruel joke -- usually off by 45º or more, often off as much as 180º.

I'd be grateful if you responded at eric.hanchrow@gmail.com

Thanks!

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From: Preston L. Bannister (Nov 13 2016, at 16:59)

Damn. Might have to buy a Pixel.

This is not random. The last camera I bought (pocket-sized, but priced in the SLR range) was for low-light performance. When out hiking at twilight, prior digital cameras failed badly.

When a phone-camera can do well in twilight (and even in night), that leaves a lot less space for single-function cameras.

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author · Dad
colophon · rights

November 12, 2016
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