using a reasonble quality compact camera (Fijifilm X30)

I guess a tripod is a given. Tried to get some shots last night and found all auto settings resulted in over exposure. Was able to get fair pics on manual but only by trial and error and being hand held they did not stand up to enlargement. So any hints on set up?

Firstly, check the weather – most of Wales is going to be in fog/cloud according to Carol on BBC breakfast this morning.

Assuming you can see it, tech radar had a guide a few days ago.

Edit: with added linky

Forget it.

It’s really difficult. Moon pictures will be tiny and you will see nothing of interest. Even a huge zoom lens does not much.

If you want to try, don’t trust the camera’s metering, because it’ll be averaging out the whole picture and therefore trying to expose for the blackness of space, so the moon itself will be a fuzzy white splodge. Stop down by like 6 stops at least. If your camera has manual settings then you can keep reducing the shutter speed on a small aperture; if not and it just has exposure compensation you’ll probably find the under-expose button doesn’t go low enough.

The super-moon thing is a bit of a con anyway – it’s only slightly larger than normal in reality, and if there’s one thing that’s really difficult to process its actual size in your brain, it’s the moon. If you want it to look huge take a picture of something a long way off with the moon behind it, zoomed in. This will make it look massive at any point in its orbit.

It probably won’t focus on it either, so manual focus helps.

Take warm clothing, and more trial and error! Sounds like you’ve got a headstart from last night’s fun. Start with what you had then, and go from there. Exposure is just a matter of doubling or halving till you get close, so you should get some decent results within a few shots.

You’ll get sharper shots of landscape (except for the moveable bits e.g. trees/branches) with smaller apertures, but exposures will be longer, so longer trails from stars and car head/tail lights, more blur from clouds. All about finding the best compromise, as per all things photographic. ISO is a similar story, go as low as you can for the exposure you’ve got time for, less grain, but longer exposures.

Most of my successes/failures have been on the composition, I don’t have a long lens, so mine have been moonlit landscapes rather than closeups of the moon/silhouetted skylines. Those are bit more critical for timing, you might only get one or two goes at it.

The moon is very bright against a very dark sky so you need to spot meter off the surface itself (maybe not possible with a compact) of failing that set your camera to underexpose by quite a bit. Tripods – well if you meter off the moon then its quite bright so slow shutter speeds are not needed. Also the moon moves quite quickly so slow shutter speeds on a tripod will result in blurring anyhow.
I took some quite decent ones the other day with my Sigma 150-600 hand held.

Just grab a photo off the net. There’ll be much better ones than you can take. And it’ll be the same moon.

Forget it.

Yup,that’s the spirit.

The super-moon thing is a bit of a con anyway – it’s only slightly larger than normal in reality, and if there’s one thing that’s really difficult to process its actual size in your brain, it’s the moon. If you want it to look huge take a picture of something a long way off with the moon behind it, zoomed in. This will make it look massive at any point in its orbit.

Christ,what a grumpy wee sod you can be moly 🙄

Very low res as I had to copy it from Facebook! The original is at home.

You’ve got the original moon at home? 😯

What have we got up there, then? TrumpMoon? Putin Deathstar?

You’ve got the original moon at home?

Rockhopper earlier…

Don’t ask a dog to take the picture because they can’t look up.

Christ,what a grumpy wee sod you can be moly

Hehe.

It’s because I’ve tried, and succeeded, then looked on my results and thought ‘oh, that’s the moon’. Wasn’t really worth it 🙂

I don’t think your camera has a very long reach, so you might not get a great result but it’s nice to try these things anyway.

Don’t rely on the ‘auto’ setting of your camera. To get any detail in moon, I would be looking at around 1/150-1/200 shutter speed at f8 on my SLR. I am not sure if that can be directly transposed for a compact…stick the camera in manual, set the aperture to a middle setting (not sure of the range on your camera – my compact for example is f1.8-f8.0) and adjust the shutter speed to get the result you want.

Set the ISO from auto to manual as well and leave it at 200.

You probably don’t need a tripod, but they can be helpful for framing. If you use a tripod, I would also use the self timer just to keep things stable….

Last time I tried to get some moon pics, I was using a 70-300 zoom set to 300 and the moon still doesn’t fill the frame very well.
That was with my D80 SLR.

I’ll try to find the images….

Not this moon, but taken a few years back. For some reason, I only had my 300mm lens at 250mm and this is a very heavy crop 1/125s, ISO 200, f11 and obviosly on a tripod, with delayed shutter. Vibration compensation off

[url=https://flic.kr/p/dHFFd5]Moon2[/url] by davetheblade, on Flickr

A quick google shows the x30 has a 112mm equivalent lens. That’s a non-starter.

Found ’em.

Did this for photo/day in 2013 – cropped, not as shot:

ISO 200. 1/100 @ f8:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/kLLgxx]13-11-12 DSC_8338[/url] by STW stumpy01, on Flickr

Next one is last September I think when everyone was going on about a ‘blood moon’ on Facebook….this is the uncropped image I think….

ISO 200. 1/200 @ f8

[url=https://flic.kr/p/PczeGB]DSC_9154[1][/url] by STW stumpy01, on Flickr

Crop of the above image:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/P4LuMi]IMG_20150927_203557[1][/url] by STW stumpy01, on Flickr

Don’t ask a dog to take the picture because they can’t look up.

Macro shots are a dog’s forté

Skywatchers in Australia were disappointed when thick clouds obscured their view of the Moon, which made a short-lived evening appearance.
At Bondi Beach in Sydney, the Moon rose at around 19:07 AEDT (08:07 GMT).
“It did not meet my expectations. It came out for about 30 seconds,” said one onlooker, Michaela.

Brilliant.

Christ,what a grumpy wee sod you can be moly

He is right though.
Supermoon
“To observers, it will appear about 7% larger than normal and about 15% brighter – although the human eye is barely able to discern that difference”.

I’ve got the camera in the bag for a getting-off-a-stop-early-and-riding-home-over-the-hill, cloud-based photographical disappointment session.

I’ll pick 20 of the most brilliant shots to post up here when I get home.

i leant out of bed last night to take a look and Mrs Slim said she saw the hole of the moon.

Some great replies, just the right mix of comedic, sarcastic and helpful to be a proper STW thread. Thanks guys 🙂

Will have another go tonight (the moon is out now to be fair) and see if I can better those from last night.

You’re up in the hills aren’t you?

Just remember – stop down a lot.

.

I took this on my phone held up to the eyepiece of a telescope.
It’s not super but it’s alright

Too cloudy for me tonight but this was last months attempt for this years photo a day.

🙁 Some fantastic pics here.

My attempt from a couple of minutes ago. Hand-held & maxed out at 112mm 🙂

Still a thin film of cloud about unfortunately so takes the sharpness off it

Got this a couple of years ago. Can’t even remember how but probably through an Opticron spotting scope & a Lumix G1.

Wasn’t a ‘super moon’ AFAIR.

Here’s mine from sunny Manchester

Not as good as some of the ones above, but taken with a 200mm on a tripod. I used the onscreen display to zoom in and manually focus before taking the shot via remote.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/ECdcvk]Big Moon[/url] by Dave Aspinall, on Flickr

Check out my supermoon photo from sunny surrey:

The moon is top quarter, 2/3s point on the left of the frame

more dicking about

The other 15 of the most amazing shots I took this evening will be available for sale in a limited edition run of prints for only elenty hundred poinds each.

I’ve been meaning to post my ‘super moon’ pictures up. Here’s one:

and I also got a selfie:

And one more just because the moon is such an interesting subject to photograph:

I think you really need to have a very short exposure time, I actually have to fit a filter to the lens of my camera to reduce the glare from the moon when taking a shot.(I may have cheated a wee bit as this is a webcam fitted to the eyepiece of my telescope.)