that's why i got the fs-4... i haven't used tape in months.

Thanks for the info.I have emailed Les and await his reply.I hope you don't mind that I told him I got his name from you.

On reflection, I did have a sort of a moment like the jumbo about 9 months back.

I was testing a long lens on the PD150 (home made adaptor) and was tracking aircraft landing at Jandakot. A student pilot was doing touch and goes in a Grob Tutor. When he lifted off again, things became a bit messy, a little bit exciting too for a moment because the aircraft was starting to point my way. In the excitement, when I buttoned the camera on I double buttoned and it shut off again - moment lost.

Somehow the student managed to sort the mess out. On full power he staggered back along the direction of the runway and eventually found the source of his problem - flaps fully down on take-off. A most forgiving aircraft the Grob.

How about a picture of that? Here's one of mine with my XL1S:

www.visuar.com/DVi/moon.jpg

I'm not sure what settings I was on (it was the standard 16x lens), it is a bit "soft" (probably shot in frame mode instead of interlaced).

Pretty hard to find in your viewfinder, zoomed in :)

Rob - that image does look quite soft to me. You'll find that using a prime 100mm telephoto Nikkor or Canon FD lens will provide a big improvement (both 100mm and 16X will be equal to approximately an SLR 700mm lens frame).

A longer quality telephoto lens, such as a 300mm FL or ED lens provides an image that almost fills the frame, with incredible quality.

It is such a pity that it is not also possible to use fast, pro-level wide prime lenses to obtain a wide image on the XL cameras.

Regarding trying to find the moon using a 16X or 20X lens at the telephoto setting...you should try using an SLR 600mm lens!
The moon is so big, and speeds across the frame so fast, that I've found the best method is to first find the moon in the frame, and then move the lens to point very slightly to the left so the moon is out of shot. Now lock the tripod head completely down solid. Press the wireless remote control to start the camera recording, and then watch the moon come into view, slide slowly across the frame, and then disappear out of the top right hand corner of the frame. (If your tripod is level, the moon will not move level across the frame, but will travel in a slight arc, from left bottom corner to top right corner.) The final results can look spectacular.

Rob.

Is it okay to send the .jpg image to your email address as quoted here, as an attachment?

Sure, I can put it up on a site for all to see if you want.

Funny, I mixed things up a bit. My question was originally for Tony's shot of the jumbo jet infront of the moon :) But thanks for the pics Bob ;)