experienced photographers about?

nej

I had a Lumix FZ-10 4MP for a while. Good camera but rubbish at higher ISOs. I replaced it with an EOS 400D. Amazing camera.

The problem with the moon not exposing correctly might be down to the metering. Cameras see the world is tones of grey, and when the light meter is reading the scene, it'll try to balance things out to achieve a kind of mid-tone grey. When you have a huge contrast (i.e. bright white moon and pitch-black sky) this can not work very well - so you end up with a dodgy moon or a dodgy sky.

DSLRs have multiple metering modes (such as spot metering or partial metering) which will look at less of the view than a typical evaluative metering that looks at the whole scene (like the Panasonic probably does). Therefore you could expose correctly for the moon (moon shots don't need a long shutter speed - it's pretty bright - but still use a tripod and a remote release or self-timer), but would darken the rest of the sky missing out the rest of the stars. That's probably acceptable for a moon shot.

toasterman

Thanks everyone.
I think I've confused some of you though. I'm not considering buying a DSLR - I was several months ago when this thread was started. Note to self: start a new thread next time.
I decided against it because of size, weight, etc and I wanted a zoom lense - and zoom lenses on DSLRs are a lot of money.
Plus I took this one to V Festival (sadly it rained the whole weekend) and I wouldn't have risked a DSLR.

I love the 12x optical zoom on my Panasonic and yes you can use it just holding it. Sometimes you get blurry shots, but a lot less frequent than my old 3x optical zoom Fuji.

I'm learning a little, but I'm definitely not ready for a DSLR at the moment. The Panasonic has a lot of settings I don't understand yet, without having the full range of the DSLR ones I don't understand to confuse me further.. if that makes sense.

Regarding the "starry sky" mode I assumed I was meant to be using, it had options for 15, 30, 45 and 60 seconds exposure I think. I tried the 15 and the 60 and pretty much the same result.
It was on a mini tripod on a wall at the time, using the self timer so I didn't knock it.
The flash and optical stabiliser was off during this - because switching on starry sky mode disables them automatically.

I tried manual focus, but it didn't really seem to focus on what I was looking at any point.
I tried fiddling with some things, but only ended up with a slightly greyer looking image of the "sun".

Now I know I shouldn't be using the long exposure times on the moon though, that should speed up my experiments. At least I don't have to wait a minute for photo and a minute for processing each time now, to see if it's still the sun.

I may give it another go tonight, so if you see a strange man in a lot of layers lurking around outside taking photos tonight - it's me. Don't call the police

darich

Toasterman - glad you got something you're happy with. There would be nothing worse than spending a load of money on something to find it wasn't what you wanted it to be.
If you need any pointers or have any questions then either post them here or feel free to fire a PM at me.

happy clicking!!

converse

isofa wrote: »

Some links for you.

A good price comparison site for camera gear is:
www.camerapricebuster.co.uk

Review site for cameras:
www.dpreview.com

Review site of lenses (mainly Canon/Canon fit):
www.the-digital-picture.com

General camera review site with articles and videos:
www.cameralabs.com

And a good friendly forum:
www.tifp.org.uk

Great links especially dpreview.com it's the gold standard for camera reviews. I'd add: http://www.photographymags.co.uk/ home of Practical Photography. Night Photography lessons are good on this site,
http://www.schoolofphotography.com/night/night.html Should help you with some techniques.