Learning to use my camera, among other things

Today Steve and I had a big shopping adventure, which was great. We even took some time to get coffee from the coffee shop where my card is filed away.

We also stopped in at the Fairbanks Museum which includes the dog mushing museum. I learned a little bit about dog mushing. This sign showed the different ways to harness the dogs.


One of our stops was at a local photography shop. For some reason I picked up the camera that I have and was going to show Steve how I could only choose a mode and add 2 seconds to the exposure time, so I never really knew what the longest exposure time was that I could get. As I was doing this I managed to get it to 15 seconds, which is good enough for bright aurora. I tested out the long exposure, as well as two ISO settings by taking photos of the launch pad from the telemetry building up the hill.


This is with the ISO set to 1600.


And this is with the ISO set to 800.

I don't really know anything about cameras, but I like to pretend to. It is particularly fun to use my point and shoot camera in such ways. The best part was that I borrowed Steve's mini portable tripod and jammed it in a snowbank for stability. Right now we are "in for winds" so if there is good aurora I need to be inside in case we pick up the count, so no more photographer business for the time being.