Eclipse from Palatine, IL

Got my first digital camera several days ago. Having shot nothing but my trusty Canon AE-1 for 25 years, I'm experiencing some culture shock. However, I did manage to fumble through the eclipse and get a few passable exposures. I find I'm having a hard time focusing manually though, the lcd screen is rather grainy.

Panasonic FZ10, set at ISO 100, 5.6, 1/250. It has 12x optical zoom, with 3x digital zoom, this shot was all way to 36x.

I am so at the low end of the digital learning curve. Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Christine Welsh

Attached Image:

Christine, that is actually a way cool full disk shot of the ingress, but I think the following could be the problem....

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Digital Zoom does nothing more that just blow up the picture on the screen, like cropping and enlarging. So, you sacrifice a huge amount of image quality. Its just like if you find a small section you like on a 35mm film shot with 800 speed film, you crop and enlarge, and wham! grain city. You probably got the best focus, just you cant tell in the expanded image. That is digital zoom. There is really no reason to ever shoot going into digital zoom because you can digitally zoom a picture after the fact on your computer. Also for the moon just set the autofocus on the infinity lock and that should do the trick for you. You will be able to pick out plenty of craters with nothing more that the 12X optical zoom on you camera, hope this helps. Vince