camera settings for moon pictures

[felix]

this may as well hav been posted in a photography forum.. but i was wondering what settings should be used under what circumstances while taking photos of objects such as the moon?

I have a regular 4MP digital camera without any fancy lense add-ons, so zoom is restricted to 10x optical. I was taking pics of the lunar eclipse last night, and was trying around with the focal length and exposure time (should have also varied the iso). I did some quick prior research before i headed out to take the pics, and found that using a low iso such as iso80 would reduce the noise in darker environments (such as takings pics of moon)? and also to use long focal length, and be careful not to overexpose..

so under what circumstances do i use what settings? when the moon moved from totality to partial eclipse, the bright white edge seemed over-exposed (with just a blob of white) while I could still see the fine details of the still dark/red areas. I used iso80 for the whole time.. but have seen some other people here used an a lot higher iso configuration

thx in advance!

[joshman (Josh)]

i've found that you need a combination of ISO, f value and shutter speed to effectively take photos of the moon, a full moon is easy enough, a shutter speed of 1/500s @ ISO100 @ f/8.0 usually yields good photos for me, i could prolly handhold that, but for images' sake i use a tripod, i would definitely look at getting one if you don't already. for the eclipse, during totality i was using a shutter speed of 2s @ ISO800 @ f/5.6.


again it all really comes down to practise, get out with your camera and learn how it best takes the photos you want. don't be afraid to mess with the settings, experiment and you shall learn

[g__day (Matthew)]

Plugged into a C9.25 I shoot the moon at ISO 1600 in generally 1/1600 of a sec thru to 1/2500 of a sec if that helps. More than this guarantees over-exposure.

[RB (Andrew)]

Here's a handy exposure calculator to use as a guide.

http://www.shaystephens.com/moon_calc.php

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by Rocket Boy

Here's a handy exposure calculator to use as a guide.

http://www.shaystephens.com/moon_calc.php

Excellent Andrew - thank you!