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Paint Mines by Moonlight



Full moon this weekend and we drove two hours to Calhan, Colorado to the Paint Mines Interpretive Park.  We were hoping that the moon would illuminate the rock formations. We were so right!

Sunset was around 7:30 PM and the moon rise started at around 8:00 PM.  We snapped a few golden hour and blue hour shots, nothing to write home about but when the moon rose the rocks glowed just as we anticipated.  We set up the tripods and started doing some long exposures.  I started out with the 16 mm 1.4 with an ISO range between 160 and 250 and played around with Bulb mode, varying the seconds.  My old Nikon D500 had shutter settings up to 30 seconds, the Fuji XT3 does not. I have the remote app on my phone for Fuji and it worked very well once I got the connection set up.  The XT3 has a seconds counter which was great when using Bulb mode and I could end the shot when I wanted.  Erich's Nikon Z6 didn't and he had to count off the seconds.  I found as it got darker 30 - 40 seconds worked pretty well. 30 second max for stars of course.  Awesome shoot!!

Camera: Fiji XT3








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Location: Paint Mines Interpretive Park, 29950 Paint Mine Rd, Calhan, CO 80808, USA

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