Pixelated Mo: Chap Go Mai Moon

Chap Go Mai... is that how you spell it ... hmm anyway Chap Go Mai marks the end of Chinese New Year. For some it marks the end of CNY gambling and for others it starts their search for another reason to party and drink..... wait a minute ... i thought you didnt need a reason for that.... anyway ...for some it brings about the Luna Eclipse.

Thats when the moon goes thru all of its phases in one night. I believe this time it was a partial luna eclipse. It was to happen between 5am to 6am on sunday... I wanted to sit up for it but I like most of use... i was fast asleep. Took a few pictures of the moon yesterday though. If you are trying to do the same with your compact digital or otherwise, Try using a faster shutter speed instead of night mode or automatic mode. Zoom-in as much as you can. In my case my camera can zoom up to 10x optical zoom. But if you dont have a big zoom, you can try setting to the highest capturing size your camera has. If you have interpolated... go for it.

So lets say you take a shoot in 6 megapixel, After taking the shoot use the play/view mode. Zoom into the picture that you just took. Your LCD screen would show a 'trim' option to crop the picture using the zoom button (this is digital zooming). Although it is not as clean or crisp as optical zooming...it is usually good enuff. Usually you can trim till the picture is 1 megapixels and save it, but some cameras have the option of keeping in to 6 megapixel after you have cropped it. But using this method will resultin too much noise in the picture.

Of cos you will need a tripod to take a good clean shoot. I did not have a tripod so what i did was i rested the camera on my car roof and tilted it up with my fingers. I zoomed in maximum and also used the trimming function in my camera to get a closeup of the moon as seen below.