Under cover of darkness, I sneaked over to the Baron-Lands, and stole this image of a certain bridge. Tiptoed back out of the village, and over the hills to home.

Well... I've only Blipped it once this month. And that was from the other side. I did walk the five+ miles there, and same back. Even lugged the hulking Bronica and tripod. Didn't use the former. The later was essential. Soaked on the last couple of miles of the return journey. The rain was bad enough, for me to resort to jogging some of it. Not quite the right shoes/attire for that. Nevermind the rucksack of photogear. Legs will suffer tomorrow.

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Tech bumf, and daft logic followed by this amateur:

There's was a cracking full moon rising. I only realised it was out as I approached the bridge. It would have looked tiny and vastly overexposed here, so I set up the tripod with it obscured behind a bridge leg. In setting up, tried to avoid have the nearby legs hiding others behind, and moving below the bridge so as not to see the streetlights on it, but wanted the flashing navigation lights visible.

Tried an eight second exposure at f/11 and the lowest ISO. Way too dark. 30 seconds - much better. This was the third and final one, with f/8 and a change of white balance from Auto to Incandescent light. Not "correct" I knew, but it would be closer for some of the scene without unduly affecting other parts. I near enough always shoot RAW format files, so it could be tweaked later if necessary. Seemed okay, and as it was darned cold with the wind whistling by, I packed up and headed off.

As this is an ultra wide-angled lens, a really small aperture isn't necessary to have near enough everything in focus. Focused on the rocks using the nearest focus point. That can be important, rather than say using the centre one and recomposing, especially with a lens like this. Well, important if you're a fussy git, such as yours truly.

Processing - not much, a bit of overall shadow recovery to just show the (nearby) underside of the bridge, and brighten was almost a black band across the middle. And because of that adjustment, a smidgen of noise reduction was necessary. No straightening of the horizon... for once. White balance seemed okay (to me). Had I corrected for the orange tinge to the rocks etc., the sky would've been way too blue.

Verdict - Okay. Would have like to see a wee bit more of the nearby tower on the far side, and possibly the top of the missing one. Don't like the top of thickened lower leg sections lining up with the horizon, and must have tilted the lens upwards a bit. This always adds noticeable distortion with such lenses. It's what's caused the left-hand leg to appear to be leaning slightly outward (though nothing like as extreme as this). Biggest mistake I noticed whilst waiting for the exposure... "What's that line on the rock?" follows it down to where it meets the tripod foot. "Bugger!" The other tripod leg shadow is mostly hidden.

One last item of note: the tripod didn't move, but the Earth did. Those stars have slight trails after just 30 seconds. Admittedly you have to look pretty close to see that. Link to bigger version in a day or two.