Night Pictures All of my night pictures are just black. Do I have to have the IRAM set on to get night pictures. During the full moon I was able to get night pictures with the IRAM off.

Pictures probably look black because there is no light at night. Camera need light to take photographs.

You cant see infrared flash, but it is not working. The only way to check this is with special equipment. If the unit is new, send it back.

You're going to face two separate problems here.

One, the moon occupies a rather small portion of the night sky. Even fully zoomed in, the moon is going to be not much more than a bright spot in the sky.

Two, the camera is designed to assume that almost every scene is an average brightness. Given how much of the scene is a black sky, the camera will attempt to render the sky as average (what photographers call a "medium gray"). This will result in a picture with a gray sky and a featureless white blob for the moon.

If you think about it, the full moon is nothing more than a really big rock under a midday sun. Thus what you want is the same exposure as when taking a picture on a clear sunny day. Unfortunately the camera is going to be fooled by all that dark sky and try to compensate for it. What you really need is to be able to bypass the camera's light meter and set the proper exposure yourself. The C195, unlike more sophisticated cameras, doesn't allow you to do so. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

You're going to face two separate problems here.

One, the moon occupies a rather small portion of the night sky. Even fully zoomed in, the moon is going to be not much more than a bright spot in the sky.

Two, the camera is designed to assume that almost every scene is an average brightness. Given how much of the scene is a black sky, the camera will attempt to render the sky as average (what photographers call a "medium gray"). This will result in a picture with a gray sky and a featureless white blob for the moon.

If you think about it, the full moon is nothing more than a really big rock under a midday sun. Thus what you want is the same exposure as when taking a picture on a clear sunny day. Unfortunately the camera is going to be fooled by all that dark sky and try to compensate for it. What you really need is to be able to bypass the camera's light meter and set the proper exposure yourself. The C195, unlike more sophisticated cameras, doesn't allow you to do so. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

Assuming you mean pictures of the moon itself and not a night shot with the moon in it, set your camera to the manual exposure mode and ignore the light meter.

There's an old rule-of-thumb called the "Sunny Sixteen Rule." This states that the proper exposure under a midday sun is an aperture of f/16 and a shutter speed of 1 over the ISO. For example with an ISO 200 film or a digital sensor set at ISO 200 the proper exposure is f/16 and 1/200 second.

What does this have to do with night shots of the moon? Well, the moon is simply a large piece of rock under a cloudless midday sun. Thus the Sunny Sixteen Rule gives you a starting point for the exposure. You can then refine it by reviewing the picture on the LCD and looking at the histogram. The sky will go completely black and you won't see any stars, but you should be able to see at least some of the features of the lunar landscape.

All automatic-exposure cameras try to render the scene as a middle gray. The moon is a small portion of the total image, so the camera concentrates on the sky. In trying to get enough light to make the sky go from black to gray, the moon gets completely overexposed. What you want is the moon properly exposed, even if that means the sky goes completely black.

For a full moon, you want the same exposure you would use at noon on a bright day. If you think about it for a moment, it becomes obvious. The full moon is simply a landscape at high noon. Unfortunately, the camera can't know that.

Set the camera to manual. Start with the "Sunny-16 Rule", which tells you to set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1/ISO. So for example, set the ISO to 200, the aperture to f/16, and the shutter speed to 1/200. Look at the result on the screen and adjust the exposure as needed.

That was for a full moon. For other phases you may need to add exposure, but the "Sunny-16 Rule" will still give you a starting point.

Pictures of the moon require a tripod. Night mode is a good starting place. After taking a test picture, if the moon seems too bright, you need to set the "exposure compensation" to the next lower number. Take another test photo and adjust as necessary one way or another. After you get a successful photo, you will need to crop it a lot to get the moon large enough.

Please readjust the ISO.
In order to find a pattern please experiment: For example: Try Different SCN (If you're experiencing this problem with your night pictures try and use SCN night, the logo shows a moon and a star, with or without Flash.

Hi maria,

first how did you take a picutre during daytime ? try the auto setting on the camera , perhaps you have it now in the night mode and that may cause your problem

there are so many solutions to this I barely know where to begin.

First, set the Dial to M, then on the multimode (round) button, push on the left side to bring the exposure time up. For night shots I find that F2.7 and any time of 1" or more yields fairly good shots.

You should see the change in the view finder, or the lcd if you're one to use that.