Moon shots

[AndCity]

Two shots of the moon, one at 8.00pm when it was still quite light and the other at 10.00pm when it was darker. Is there any tricks to shooting the moon or am I having a big ask using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18?

I purposely didn't shot a full moon as I feel the shadow brings out the craters, but will try a full moon as soon as the cloud cover allows!

[dcclark]

Those are pretty nice. Good clarity. What settings did you use?

Also, is your goal to get a really sharp, big photo of the moon -- or to make a photo including the moon, but with another subject? If it's the second, you may need to do some photo editing -- the moon is so bright that it's usually hard to get both the moon and a dusk/night landscape exposed correctly.

[AndCity]

Apologies to the moderators for posting two pictures - I should've read the guidelines!

I was attempting just a shot of the moon by itself, as I had noticed that looking at through my son's telescope that the craters appeared sharper and more defined around the edges of the shadow.

The EXIF data is:

Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ18
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/4.2
Focal Length: 82.8 mm
ISO Speed: 200

I had cropped the original in photoshop to this picture and consequently lost the EXIF data in flickr. Is there any way of preserving it when something is resaved in photoshop?

[dcclark]

Originally Posted by AndCity

Apologies to the moderators for posting two pictures - I should've read the guidelines!

I was attempting just a shot of the moon by itself, as I had noticed that looking at through my son's telescope that the craters appeared sharper and more defined around the edges of the shadow.

The EXIF data is:

Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ18
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/4.2
Focal Length: 82.8 mm
ISO Speed: 200

I had cropped the original in photoshop to this picture and consequently lost the EXIF data in flickr. Is there any way of preserving it when something is resaved in photoshop?

Interesting... so you shot these through the telescope then? (Awesome!) Alternately, the focal length may not be expressed in 35mm terms, so I'm not sure what 82.8mm corresponds to.

I'm not sure about preserving EXIF data... I have never lost it, but then again I use Gimp.

[AndCity]

Sorry, you misunderstand me - they weren't shot through the telescope (although I did try but failed dismally!!). I only noticed the detail in the shadows through it and then went out in the garden with my camera. I played around with the shutter speed and this was the best one.

[inkista]

It look great! but just a smidge underexposed. Using a tripod would let you use longer shutter speeds.

Also, there apparently are inexpensive mounts for using P&S digicameras with a telescope.

[AndCity]

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated. I did actually use a tripod - perhaps I should have used the timer to avoid any shake when pressing the shutter release.

[inkista]

Yup. When I'm shooting the moon, I tend to use a tripod, cable release, mirror lock-up, and a timer. A timer will do the same thing for you, since you don't have a mirrorbox slap to worry about.