Tonight we are able to observe Earth’s moon at the closest orbit for the year.  This happily coincides with Venus traversing the sun early in the morning (Sunday 6th of May).  The moon will be full around 1pm (13:35) today and rising at 5:15pm (17:15).

Here are some wide and telephoto images I captured from right outside my house on a chilly Sunday morning of the waxing gibbous moon (98% full moon).

Exposure: 1 second
Focal Length: 11mm
ISO: 400
F-stop: f/2.8

A beautiful shot from my Olympus 11-22mm ultra wide angle lens.  To capture the detail, I shot this at ISO-400 and an f-stop of f/2.8 at 11mm for 1 second with a focal length of 11mm.

Exposure: 4 seconds                                 Exposure: 1/60 second
Focal Length: 104mm                                Focal Length: 200mm
ISO: 100                                                  ISO: 800
F-stop: f/8                                                F-stop: f/3.5

Next, a zoom shot at 104mm (above, left) and at 200mm (above, right) with an f-stop of f/8 (above, left) and an f-stop of f/3.5 (above, right) and an exposure of 4 seconds (above, left) and at 1/60 sec (above, right).  Obviously I didn’t have a realistic chance of getting a clear focus because of the cloud cover, but you do get to view the perfect symmetry of the moon, and the misty clouds don’t look half bad.

Exposure: 4 seconds
Focal Length: 11mm
ISO: 100
F-stop: f/2.8

Reverting back to the 11-22mm lens, another shot this time with a 4 second exposure, ISO-100 and the same f-stop (f/2.8) and focal length (11mm).  The clouds seem a bit puffier and there appears to be a slight difference in sharpness.  I just threw this one in for comparison purposes.

Here are two examples of using High Dynamic Range (HDR), post-processing tone mapping from the RAW format:

 

The first shot is using the default details enhancer, the second using a monochrome filter.

I like how the left hand photo above (which is a tone mapped version of the first photo) almost looks liek it is set against blue sky – in the middle of the night!

Here are some  photos of the full moon, taken earlier today (Monday 7/05/2012):

 

Exposure: 4 seconds                                Exposure: 1/1000 sec
Focal Length: 11mm                                 Focal Length: 200mm
ISO: 200                                                 ISO: 320
F-stop: f/2.8                                            F-stop: f/3.5

Under a wave of high sirrus or alto looking cloud, the moon shone through.  Once the majority of the cloud had (briefly) passed, I was able to shoot the moon itself using a 50-200mm f/2.8-f/3.5 telephoto lens.

Earlier that evening, I’d been playing around with the moon in concert with the moonlight’s lens flare, to create some fairly dramatic composition.

Exposure: 2 seconds                               Exposure: 1 sec
Focal Length: 54mm                                Focal Length: 200mm
ISO: 200                                                ISO: 100
F-stop: f/5                                              F-stop: f/5.6

Originally posted to Sanders Technology as “Easter Build II: The Conclusion”.
Reposted with some editorial amendments.

Around Easter, 2008, I started to build the monster Lego Ultimate Collector’s Edition Millennium Falcon kit.  The set, comprised of over 5,000 parts took nearly two days of solid effort to construct.  There were no shortcuts as each section was unique in construction.

Construction began around 2:30pm on Easter Sunday, and the day’s work was only interrupted for a swim in the pool and to make dinner.  I finished up at approximately 1:30am.   I’d say that I’m at about the 65% mark (perhaps even further) as the model frame and most of the underside (except the entry) has been completed.

  

Thanks must go to my darling wife who spent the afternoon sorting the 5,000 Lego parts for me while I was building.  This has been a real time saver.  Of course it does mean that the mess on the dining room table disappears just a little more quickly.

After an endless series of gaffes and misreads, we meet the conclusion of one of the longest kit builds in my experience.  You would expect that a kit containing over 5,000 pieces would take some amount of time to construct!

  

In this case I think I can fairly say that I lost about one or two hours because of little mistakes or using the wrong colour pieces... *groan*  All told, construction took (give or take) about sixteen hours.  It started Sunday at 2:30pm and finished roughly before 8 am this morning - with meals and sleep in between, obviously.

I watched about five movies (background noise mainly) including 'Under Siege', 'Michael Clayton', 'Underworld', 'Johnny Mnemonic', 'The Program' and about the first half hour of 'Friday Night Lights'.  In the end, the result was worth it.  See attached pics for more info.

 

Build advice (for other would-be kit building enthusiasts):

• The people at Lego do understand the laws of physics, if it doesn’t fit, you misread their instructions
• Yes, it's sometimes bloody hard to distinguish dark brown from dark red bricks in the instruction manual (especially at night).
• With big sheets of flat Lego, ensure you use the right sized piece (and save a half hour of investigation).
• Pay special attention to the framework, it can be tricky to make changes later'
• Would it kill Lego to do a better job in distinguishing between black, dark grey and grey bricks in the instruction manual??

The lesson here is, when you notice a small quantity of pieces not coloured similarly to the majority colours (in this kit, grey, black and red) make sure you scrutinise use of said pieces.

Anyhow, after many hours of labour, we come to the final build:

 

Spectacular!

 

Lest we forget.

Anzac Day 2012 has given me an opportunity to reflect on our gallant military forces of the past and present.  My father (ex-Army) and I visited the Australian War Memorial a few months ago, and afforded us both the experience of envisioning the struggle and sacrifice undertaken in the various wars our nation has participated in.

Heirlooms

The day has also given me an opportunity to do a few chores (gaining ground on household work seems very hard with a new born).  One, is the restoration of two items of mine from when I was Jake’s age.  A silver milk jug and a silver hair brush, which had tarnished over the 30+ years.