Eclipse

[PonsAsinorum]

I took some photos of the lunar eclipse the other night and put them together into one.

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/1299/manymoonsxu1.th.jpg (http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=manymoonsxu1.jpg)

[scarymary]

Pretty cool. What kind of camera do you use?

[PonsAsinorum]

It was a Nikon D40 with a 55-200mm lens set to 200. I had to do some tricky balancing for the bottom row of shots since the moon was so high and I had no tripod. The exposure for those was about 1 second.

[scarymary]

Since you seem to know about cameras, Pons, what exactly is an SLR camera? And are they better than digital cameras? Please explain in terms I can understand.

[PonsAsinorum]

An SLR camera is a single-lens reflex camera.

A typical disposable camera, for instance, has one set of optics for the viewfinder and another set for the film itself. This means when you look through the viewfinder, you aren't looking along the same optical path as the film.

An SLR camera has a mirror that moves when the shutter is opened. So prior to taking the picture, the mirror reflects into the viewfinder exactly what the film would see. In other words, it uses a single lens for both the film and the viewfinder. This means you can adjust the focus of the system prior to taking the picture. Without the SLR, there's no way to know if your subject is in focus, so you're really limited on what you can photograph.

With digital cameras that have live viewing screens, SLRs aren't all that necessary for this anymore. They still have advantages because the optical view through the viewfinder is still much more reliable than the LCD screen on the back of a point and shoot digital camera.



ETA: Forgot to answer this, but SLR refers to the method by which the viewfinder shows what you're going to shoot. It can be either digital or film. The lowest end digital SLRs from Canon and Nikon are the D40 (Nikon, $500 with basic lens) and the Rebel XTi (Canon, $590 with basic lens). There is a huge gap between those two manufacturers and the rest when it comes to SLRs. Other brands can't compete as you get bigger and better lenses, which is really the whole reason to get an SLR in the first place. If all you need is something to take family photos and the occasional landscape, a point and shoot is perfect. The quality of "lower end" digital cameras has advanced to the point where they are extremely good.

[PonsAsinorum]

If you want to capture telephoto images or wide angle images, you need an SLR because you can change lenses to suit your needs. But as far as quality of pictures go, you can get the same quality photgraph (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/150-vs-5000-dollar-camera.htm) (assuming you don't want poster-sized prints) with a $150 camera as you could get with a $5,000 camera.

With at least 5 or 6 megapixels on your camera (here (http://www.adorama.com/ICAA560R.html?searchinfo=canon%20a560&item_no=2) is a great refurbished 7 megapixel point and shoot camera with 4x optical zoom for just over $100), you can get great looking 8x10s. A fiend of mine took his son to Mount Baldy for a Boy Scout trip. He took a photograph with a point and shoot like this one from the top of the mountain, and you could make out the color of the shirts and pants of people a half mile in the background.