Last week I went to Staten Island to film the full moon rise over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge which connects Staten Island to Brooklyn. I took both my camera (Nikon D7100 and Nikon D850) for the first time.
When I got there I was surprised of the New York City view! Fort Wadsworth which is right in front of the bridge has a great view of the New York City skyline. The view is a bit fat but with my Nikon D7100 55-300 mm lens I could zoom in enough for a cool shot!
I set up my Nikon D7100 for a day to night of the skyline and my Nikon D850 Tamron 15-30 f/2.8 towards the bridge for a day to night shot.
My plan was to keep the Nikon D850 shooting the bridge with aperture priority at f/10 and ISO 800 with a 10 second interval.
The Nikon D7100 was also in aperture priority at a 10 second interval at f/9 and ISO 800 at 155 mm. I use ten seconds because it gives enough time to capture a shot at night for those aperture/ISO seconds. The viewpoint was also a but windy so I didn’t want to touch the cameras, especially the 300 mm lens with a zoom.
The shots were going perfect, moonrise was about 20 minutes after sunset behind the bridge. When I saw the moon first appear…I was stunned! The moon was a big, bright orange circle on the horizon behind the bridge. I quickly took my Nikon D7100 and adjusted it for a timelapse of the moonrise! I had to change my zoom and settings to manual at f/5.3, ISO 1600, and 1/4th second. The moon rises very quickly and would only stay real big as it comes above the horizon.
I used a 2 second interval and kept shooting until it got above the frame. My next plan was to shoot the moon going behind the bridge and traffic while zoomed in. Again, I waited a ittle bit and set my camera to manual at ISO 400, f/5, 1.6 seconds with a 2 second interval. In the end I shot 650+ images for this one which was a pretty cool perspective of the moonrise!
In the end all four videos turned out great. Really love having two cameras!
