camera question

I have a camera question. I use my dad's Nikon EM camera and it is more than 16 years old. I was at my cottage and tried to take a picture of a very big, bright, full moon. It was very dark out and I tried to make it look like how I saw it. What I ended up with was black and then a big yellowish thing in the top left. I will be able to scan it and post it in a couple of days (fixing scanner). Here is what I did:
-didn't use flash (should I?)
-had it on tripod
-I switched it to maual shutter and held down the shutter for 5 secs to collect more light.
-used 200 film

It looks awful and don't know how to fix it. please teach me how to take night shots. I want to be able to see the lake and trees with the moon, how do u do this.



another question. How do u change the shutter speed so you can taking moving shots? Mine always go blurry. I leave mine usually on auto, but I have an M90 option (1/90 sec shutter speed) Is this faster than auto, so with this could I take moving shots better??

wow, 16 years old! With todays' top of the range models, you probably wouldn't gegt this problem as there are several different modes...one of which is usually a night time mode. I would recommend taking the shot with a flash....although this will probably get a nice moon effect, the element in the picture (trees, lakes ets) will probably look terrible. My advice:

wait around for someone that knows more about old cameras

Experiment all you can, film isn't too expensive

Try find a photography forum board, or even better go to the local library and get a few photography books out, some are really excellent.

Perhaps go to a University that has a photography course, get friendly with a student?

Use photoshop to touch everthing up This might take a while if you're a n00b. Can i see an example of this yellow moon?

I will get it on here in the next 2 days...prob tomorrow...but I am getting scanner fixed right now

why doesn't one of the mods move this to the photo section, it would be nice to see some traffic in there. Just a suggestion...

cybling is right about all that. Get a book bro-

One thing though, skip using a flash unless you need more light on your subject. Unless you have a super powered strobe that will light up the moon, it will do you no good unless you have a foreground that you want illuminated i.e. a tree, a person, whatever.

I'm sure you'll also want a manual shutter release. Its a little puff of air that will set off your camera without you touching the actual camera. That's why your slow shutter speeds are always blurry. You're moving the camera ever so slightly.

Once you nail down night photography, think of all the possibilites - fireworks, um... lightning... and um.... moons...

good luck dude.
gg

It's not really digital photograpy..

when you're shooting a moving shot pan with your subject to get a crisper image, that'll help. gg is right on the shutter release, other than that its all about experimenting. you might also learn to start "bracketing" your shots, taking 3 pics for each shot. do one with the settings you have, one that's one fStop or shutter speed up and one that's one fStop or shutter speed down. one of the three will generall come out as a stronger better contrast image. you might take notes when you're shooting of your aperture, shutter speed, film speed, lighting conditions, etc., so that way as you progress you can look back and see what's worked for you and what hasn't.

chris

I agree with g-guy and stick my tongue out at cybling :p

FIGGGG!!!! Hey... I was gonna ask you to put your 9-11 tribute up the other day. Sorry I missed ya.

For exposures that long, you definately need a cable release at least. On newer cameras you can set the time-delay shot, which allows the camera to stop shaking before the shutter fires.

yeah, sorry, i haven't been around much. have dsl at home now so i'll be around a bit more

chris

here is the pic. (can someone help with scanner. for some reason, it makes little red, green and blue dots all over the picture.)

yeah my scanner does the same to my pics, it shows up worse with my black and white photos, i use ps to get rid of them if possible, also with some pic suggestions, it's almost the same as the sun, your shooting at the moon and your foreground with trees and water is getting backlight from the moon, you have a very dark subject (trees) and very bright/light subject moon, i would also suggest using flash, but play around, buy 200 to 400 sp film, and just use the whole role on that one subject using various combinations of tricks, you might want to write down your settings (apeture, shutter sp etc.) for each shot you take so that way when you develop your pics and find the that's the best you will have an idea the range of settings that would be best in the future for similar subjects.