You will be interested in reading this post if you are a photography enthusiast, and own a camera. Any camera for that matter, it does not have to be a high end Digital SLR camera .And what the heck is that? some of you may ask.Well, that is the type of camera which professional photographers or serious enthusiasts keep lugging around.A friend of mine happens to calls them "Space shuttle of a camera", whenever he sees one in my hand.
You can try this even with a Point-n-Shoot (regular automatic digital camera) which has a decent zoom capability (5X or more).I own a Nikon D-SLR, and I shot this picture of the moon on a full moon day with a clear sky.
The Moon !
Set the camera on Full Manual Mode . Denoted by "M" on the thumb dial. Set the following calibrations in your camera.
Aperture : F/11 (also called F-Stop)
Shutter Speed : 1/160 (One Sixtieth of a second)
ISO : 400
Zoom : MAX ( This is 11x )
White balance : AUTO
These are the settings with which I took this picture of the moon with quite an amount of detail and clarity.I finalized this setting after about 7 to 8 trial shots in different settings.
You might ask ... why am I using 1/160 th of a sec as my shutter speed.The basics say that for night photography we need to reduce the shutter speed to capture more light.So I should be reducing my shutter speed,making the shutter slower... Right ?. True !,Good job in remembering that basic fundamental (give yourself a tiny pat on your back :) ). But here, The moon is the brightest object in the night sky, and to capture the details of the terrain of the moon, the craters and the valleys , we need to cancel out the light just enough in order to capture those details.Other wise you would just end up with a picture of a bright overexposed white disc on a black background. And you do not require a tripod for this shot since your shutter speed is fast enough.
I found that the ISO at 400 increased the sensitivity of the sensor just enough to capture the details and at the same time I did not observe any noise in the photograph.And yes, I know you remember that high ISO (1600 +) results in more noise(grainy pictures) and low ISO (100/200) has absolutely no noise. :)
So good luck and try taking the pictures of the moon ,and impress people.
Cheers
Chakrapani
