Vouliagmeni Moon Photo with Point and Shoot Camera
Believe it or not, it is possible to shoot the Moon with an average point and shoot camera. In fact, for as long as you dispose of a reasonable optical zoom (300-400 mm equivalent) and the possibility to switch to manual settings, you should be able to catch some details of the surface of the moon. Of course there will be a lack of detail and sharpness, but at least you won’t end up with just a white spot on a black background.
As today the Moon is at it’s closest to the earth for this year, I did a test run last night and brought back the following shot:
Vouliagmeni Moon May 4, 2012
This is about as good as it could get
The above was shot with the following
F-stop: f/6.3
Exposure time: 1/250
ISO-speed ISO-400
Focal-length: 49 mm
35-mm focal length: 389
Exposure Program: Aperture Priority
The idea was to figure out different settings to catch at least some of the texture of the surface of the moon.
Vouliagmeni Full-moon May 5, 2012
Tonight I found a nice spot, just above Vouliagmeni’s Limanaki to catch the moon rising above the Varkiza Bay.
Click to view the bigger version for more detail.
This time I went for Shutter Priority and ISO 200 which resulted in an Exposure Time of 0,77 sec. Also I used an Exposure Bias of +0.7 step.
Of course this is not the kind of quality you could expect from a professional picture, but it shows what you can do with most any point and shoot.
Vouliagmeni Moon Variations
The temptation to pull such pictures through Photoshop is evident and I have not resisted just for the fun.
And a cooler version, filtering out some red which we usually see when the moon rises at the sea: