canon a70 question?

[harb2g]

If i wanted to take a picture of the moon, or in general the sky at night, what woudl be the best shutter speed to do this at and what other settings should i change to make sure it's a good shot?

[stduc]

To get a decent shot you will need to use one of the telescopic add on lenses - the A70 does not have enough pixels and 3*zoom is insufficient for the moon. You then have to overcome a few other problems. Mainly focus, camera shake and over exposure.

To overcome camera shake use a tripod or other support.

To overcome the A70's tendency to over expose the moon, set the camera to spot exposure and P mode. Point the camera directly at the moon and half press the shutter. Recompose if required and then take the shot. Bracket by taking additionional shots at -1 and -2 exposure compensation and see what works best. The moon is best not shot when full as their are insufficent shadows to show the moon to its best. Set the camera to fully manual and use the exposure settings reported in the best of these test shots.

Set the camera to manual focus and set this at infinity. The A70 does not appear to default to infinity when it can't focus! (and it won't focus on subjects like the moon!)

The great thing about using a digital camera is you can afford to take loads of test shots.

Have fun

[stopbath]

Just shoot the moon in manual mode.

It's a sunny day on the moon, so use the sunny 16 rule as a jumping off point for your tests and manually set aperture, shutter speed and ISO accordingly.