Moon shot - first attempt

[Don in SJ]

It was a rather clear evening for June, so got the chaise lounge chair into position and tried the new camera out on the moon. I did no reading on what settings to try so I thought I would just go with the "Night Setting" Max Zoom with Digital Zoom also to fill up the frame.
The photo was taken at dusk, not nightime, when I tried it later, the moon was to white, which means I would have to play around with the EV settings I suppose but the mosquitoes told me "not tonight"
So, I will do some reading up and hope by the time the next full moon comes around that it is during a cloudless, low humidity evening and anticapate a nice cratered photo.

The second photo is of one of my daisy's that just opened up and IF I had known there was a spider in it eating a fly, I would have done a super macro of that, darn it...........

Don

 

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[CarolinaDigs]

Don the pictures are wonderful > The Moon pic is amazing !!

 

[Harry_Morant]

Great moon shot and I particularly like the vivid orange and green colours of the daisy shots.

 

[watercolor]

That's a great moon pic for your first attempt! Yours was ALOT better than my first attempt.

For your up-coming "full moon" shot at night, you may wish to deliberately "under-expose" your image. This will help minimize the loss of highlight/crater detail on the moon. Here's a simple experiment I learned from a friend that can performed outside in the late morning or early afternoon sunlight. Place a white golf ball on a 16"x20" piece of black velvet and make a series of exposures starting at normal. Each exposure should be decreased by 1/2-stop so that each image becomes increasingly darker. The optimum amount of under-exposure necessary would be when you can clearly see the dimple pattern on the white golf ball. Try to keep the relative size relationship of the golf ball and black velvet consistent with the size of your anticipated full-moon and black sky. Hope this helps as a starting point for determining the amount of under-exposure you may wish to apply for your next moon.

Take care,
watercolor

 

[wesfrye53]

Great photos Don

 

[fossis]

Wow, great shots,

Fossis.................

 

[SomeGuy]

Long focal lengths (lots of zoom) and/or low light require a tripod for sharp images. Large magnification magnifies the effects of camera shake; you need a shutter speed of at least 1/250-1/500 sec. for a hand-held shot w/ a 12x zoom. Low light requires slow shutter speed, perhaps 1/15 sec. or more for a shot like this. (higher zoom also admits less light [higher f stop] through the lens.)

Forget digital zoom, you're better off using the crop tool (if needed) in your editing program, except:

If your camera doesn't have a spot meter option, digital zoom may be the only way to get the correct exposure on a shot like this.

Since digital film is free (once you've paid for the memory) it's always a good idea to bracket your exposure (some over, some under).

 

[COUNTRY GIRL]

Now I can't wait to try that! I really love the moon. It's ok Don you didn't have to make that spider any bigger. Really thats ok.