I wasn't sure whether to go with the Matt O'Donnell reference or the Bonnie Tyler reference. I guess history will decide whether I made the right choice.

In any case, I've determined that I haven't yet figured out how to work all the manual controls on this camera in order to get a decent moon photo.

Tonight we had a total lunar eclipse, with the moon fully in Earth's shadow from about 5:45pm to a little after 7pm EST. From about 7:00 to about 8:00, as the sunlight was beginning to spread across the moon again, I was standing in a field under a sky of thin, fast-moving clouds, trying to snap a photo any time a gap would appear in the clouds.

This camera (Olympus C-770) is mostly a point-and-shoot, but it has 10x zoom, a decent built-in lens, and a bunch of optional manual controls (manual focus, aperture, shutter speed). I had the camera on a tripod on a park bench, and I tried to do all the manual settings that I've been reading about, but I still feel like the white light was coming out way too bright, so even on my best shot it's impossible to make out any detail other than a giant ball of light.

My ideal would be something more like this one on Wikipedia (also taken tonight), with visible dark & light areas on the surface of the moon. Perhaps that's a bit ambitious for not having an SLR camera with a fancy lens, but I'll keep trying. There's another lunar eclipse coming in August, so I have 5 months to practice on regular full moons and get my technique down. We'll see how that goes.

Update (3/5/2007): The first step on my journey - Bruce pointed out to me that by default Flickr shows EXIF information from the photo, including the camera model and the settings used. E.g., this page has search results for all photos tagged with "eclipse", taken with an Olympus C770. Hmm, some used the same settings I had...