night shots with A70 help?

[billh101]

I took my A70 out last night to try some low light shots with the full moon. Well, I switched to manual, turned off the flash, put it on a tripod and adjusted the exposure until I could see what I wanted on the LCD review after I took the shot. Feeling good about myself, I went home and put the pics on my computer and they are horribly underexposed. The moon and actual lights themselves are all I can see, everything else is black. Any suggestions? I can't believe I could see so much on the little display and they're so dark on my computer that I can't see anything.
Bill

[stopbath]

Was the moon itself too dark?

Expose for full sunny day and you should be fine (you may need to tweak a bit.)

As for the earth stuff lit by moon light, you'll have to meter and expose for that by it's own. This will likely result in the moon being just a white blob, unless you've got enough sunlight from dusk or dawn to work with.

[ScantyNebula]

Did you leave your lens open long enough (shutter speed)? Play around with that and the Aperature as well - I also had issues with the S45 and underexposure...changine the aperature and Shutter speed usually helps

[billh101]

Hmmmmm... I'm going to have to do some experimentation at night with this. I thought that if the exposure looked good on the display, that it would be good. But on my computer, it looked like I was way off.

[ScantyNebula]

You may notice that when you press halfway on your shutter the preview on your lcd may go from being perfectly exposed - to almost pitch black, sort of how it appears on your computer - that is how I would tell if I should change my aperature or shutter speed - changing the exposure, I found, didn't help a lot.