FujiFilm Finepix S3300

[Willow]

H I have purchased this camera as a step toward learning photography. I find myself a little unsure of the settings side of things so use the auto or scene functions as I become more comfortable. I have also purchased a tripod but I am having trouble getting clear images of the moon in night mode. Thank you for any help as I know that many have Cannon or Nikon here.

[herbert]

Hi Suzanne,

Photographing the moon is a classic scene for confusing a camera. There is a very bright light in the middle of a dark sky. This is an extreme contrast situation (light and dark and nothing in between). When deciding on the exposure the camera will try and get a good exposure for the entire scene. It will do this by some averaging of the brightness in all or parts of the scene. In this case the moon is very small in the scene and so it will be over exposed as the camera tries to bring up the exposure for the very dark sky.

However you want to keep detail the moon. So you need to underexposed the scene relative to what the camera uses. In the normal case it is fine to use exposure compensation to tell the camera to under expose. However you may not be able to apply enough compensation for this extreme situation.

This is a great place to use manual exposure. The moon is not going to run away and so you have lots of time to experiment. Set the camera to aperture priority mode and low ISO (64 or 100) and use an aperture 1-2 stops down from maximum. For your camera the max aperture at zoom is 5.9. So set it to f8 or f11. Then take a shot of the moon and note the exposure shutter speed. Let's pretend this is 1/15 seconds.

Now switch the camera to manual and enter the same exposure details: ISO 100, F8, 1/15sec. Take a shot. It should look the same. I guess it will be over exposed for the moon. Now proceed to half the shutter speed and take a shot each time. So use a series like 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250. You should stop when the moon exposure looks good.

As an additional step you could also take some more shots to try and get an exposure you like of the sky. This could then be blended with the nice exposure of the moon to produce a shot with detail in both the moon and the sky.

Note that when using the tripod you should avoid camera shake. This is easy to do by using the 2 second shutter delay mode on your camera. So when you press the button you will not shake the camera and ruin the shot with blur.

Hope this helps.

Alex

[Willow]

Thank You Alex will give this a try and let you know how I get on. It will be the first time I have not used the Auto so I am looking forward to the learning curve.
regards suzanne