I had such a blast on Friday’s moonlight walk that I just had to do it again, even if the moon wasn’t quite full any more last night. I learned that the margins are very small when it comes to moonlight, and the moon phase is just one of the factors. There was a lot less light to go around last night, which meant that I had to make a lot of compromises with my exposures. When you’re shooting wide open and the longest shutter speed you can use is 20 secs (even that is too long, actually), the only thing left to change is the ISO and I really hate using a high ISO because the noise will be too evident in these low-light exposures.

So what had happened during just one day?

• Moon phase – 100% vs 97% full.
• Altitude of the moon – moonrise on Friday at 17:44, last night 19:28. When you’re out shooting at 22:00, it means that the moon is much lower in the sky.
• Clouds – it was clear skies on Friday, but now there was a little bit of high cloud which diffused the light.

This meant that I had no chance of taking pictures with such bright foregrounds as I did on Friday. At first I was a bit disappointed but looking at the pictures now, I think they worked out ok anyway. In a way they are more ”natural” when the foreground doesn’t look like it’s the middle of the day. So maybe the light last night wasn’t any better or worse than on Friday – just different. But I can say one thing for sure, these late evening walks in the moonlight are just awesome, why didn’t I start doing them for a long time ago?