d70 picture help ?

86JR · 22 Oct 2009 at 17:03

im having some issues with pictures.

I went out on the moors with a Nikon D70 and a AF-S Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-5.6G lense.

I tried taking pics of a half moon, on a clear night, you could see all the stars.

None of them came out, even on full zoom with a tripod on long shutter mode, i just got a black screen on both prints and monitor.

Im stumped, any ideas why ?

this is what i was looking for :

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=AF-S+Nikkor+70-300mm+moon&m=text

thankyou

robertgilbert86 · 22 Oct 2009 at 17:20

Post the exposure settings of one of the shots. A bright moon and stars require very different exposures so you won't get both together.

For the stars you'll need to use manual mode for 30 seconds with max aperture (i.e. f4.5 or 5.6) with an ISO of 800 to get a shot that you'll then have to boost in pp.

With a long focal length the shot of stars will probably be blurred anyway...

86JR · 22 Oct 2009 at 17:31

I didnt take any of stars, only the moon, and they all came out black.

It appears the D70 has an error : r07 which might be a battery fault, however whoever borrowed the camera from uni before me didnt return the usb lead or charging cables.

ChazHurst · 22 Oct 2009 at 18:23

When I took some pics of the moon, a little while back, I only managed to get 2 that looked ok out of probably 20 or so. This is a cropped version of one of them, fairly heavily processed.

I used my Sony a300 with a Minolta 70-210mm f4.

Set to:
210mm (about 315mm equivalent on APS-C sensor)
1/100th
f20
ISO400

Smallest aperture (maximum f number) seemed to be the key. Anywhere near wide was always nowhere near sharp; looked like a nondescript white blob on black. I think I had a cheapo UV filter on there too.

86JR · 22 Oct 2009 at 19:03

thats an awesome shot, and was pretty much what im looking for. Unfortunatly mine were all just black

nolimit · 22 Oct 2009 at 19:57

I don't think you will capture the stars with the moon without using some sort of GND filter.

The problem is the moon is many times brighter then the stars and if you did longer exposure the moon will be over exposed.

Also longer exposure will create motion to your moon and stars, so you have to pump up the ISO to around 800.