Ebb tide on a North Sea beach after dark, facing west. It's darker than the photo implies. I've put my foldable chair in the sand, coffee at hand and a very long lens on the camera.
I planned to photograph the moon as it touched the horizon. The weather forecast said it would be a clear night. Except for the horizon, obviously, and some haze in the sky. Only a few stars were beginning to show themselves. So, I changed to a wide-angle lens and just waited to see what would come out. Low ISO and long exposures would smooth the water, but I was not convinced what it would do with the moon.
Photopills gave me the NPF rule of 22 seconds or the 500 rule of 33 seconds for spot stars. With all the time in the world, I changed from 10 seconds to 15 minutes (filtered), but of course, I should have trusted the app. On the big screen at home, I found that around 30 seconds gave me the desired result. The red and green buoys were practically stationary, and the moon had only some slight deformation.
The picture shows more of an atmosphere than I experienced. When I laboriously tried to stand up cold and damp, I found my chair had sunk into the sand so that I was practically sitting on the wet sand. Luckily, I had placed my bag with the gear on a piece of plastic. It was almost unlucky when a passing dog tried to lift its leg next to it.
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Dimitri Vasileiou • Editor