Thank you. Yes, I think I will go with a not too expensive compact digital camera too. I will keep my eyes open for after-Christmas sales. A huge problem with the current compact dc I have is not only that it is very old (it was one of the very first digital cameras on the market), but also that even the very best batteries go flat after a few shots with flash. It literally eats them up.
Experimenting is nice (and useful), but a bit risky if you have never done it before... and it costs money if you have to put the webcam in the bin.
I think yesterday I could have taken some nice pics. I could see the craters very clearly. But the moon had a really HUGE halo which made photographing without a filter difficult. (The halo can be improved in Photoshop or similar applications with the "curves" function, but to take a really good shot a filter would be much better.)