Moon shots

Vernon L Rogers `Fotabug' (link to Fotabug's album) (Yahoo! fz10 form, 10 March 2004)...

Everyone usually starts out by overexposing the moon. It requires about the same exposure settings as for a bright sunny day {e.g. 1/400 second, f 5.6}

Or you can take a photograph of the moon when there is still a lot of daylight (so the sky is still blue) and take a photograph with the FZ10 in `P' mode (10kzoom...dpreview, Panasonic forum, 18 March 2004)

Discussion on dpreview Panasonic forum, 29 February 2004

Pixy (29 February 2004)...

I did use a tripod and the ten second timer.

I used several different white balance settings through a range of shots. I felt that this particular shot gave the best detail of the craters along the shadow line even though the moon seems a little overexposed to the right.

But what red circle {surrounding the moon}? I am somewhat colour blind in the red spectrum and do not see it.

RWill (29 Feb 2004)...

I should post my moon shots on my imagestation album. I've found that same red ring {surrounding a moon shot, due to chromatic aberration} at low f-stops. If you increase the fstop to f4 or higher, it usually goes away completely . Since you have a tcon17 {a 1.7x telephoto adapter, see section }, this may be a bit different for you, so you may need to experiment (all mine are with no tcon, since I don't own one yet :( ).

{In another post, RWill mentions he tends to use a 1/100 to 1/400 second shutter speed}

You can do an aperture priority shot, and set the aperture, or do shutter priority, and keep adjusting the shutter speed until it chooses the fstop you want. In program mode, you can use program shift: half depress the shutter button until the camera displays the aperature and shutter speed, if you want you can release the shutter button, but while the exposure info is still displayed, press the 'exposure' button on the back of the camera, then either the left or right buttons on the 4-way switch once the program shift icon is displayed. Keep pressing left or right until you get the aperature you want. I've done this a fair bit with wildlife to get the depth of field I want.

For moon shots, though, I usually use manual mode, and eyeball the exposure (usually I've been around -2ev for the moon, up to but rarely above -1ev). Choose aperatures around f4-f5.6. Don't be afraid to take a pile of slightly different shots, or use auto brackets, then choose the best ones

Harlan Saperstein reports being able to take shots of the moon hand-held, without a tripod! (but with some sharpening during post-processing). He writes...

The true beauty of the Leica optics {in the FZ10} is shown in the clarity of its moon shots. It is truly astronomical grade glass to the full extent of it's native magnification.

The test is to show the craters and mountains without a trace of blur. I have not seen any moon shots from any other camera that gives this resolution of the moon wihout spending upwards of a couple few thousand dollars.

Katherine Bloss -- DMC-FZ10 photographs of a lunar eclipse taken with a TCON-14B tele-converter.