woodweasel Loc: bellingham Wa

I am in a quandary. I have been trying to shot the super moon. I have a Nikon d5300, and have a 70-300 mounted. I am using a tripod, remote shutter button. have remove the auto focus, & the vibration button is off. I set my aperture to 8, various shutter speeds give me a variety of exposure shots. The problem is sharpness. I am willing to try anything you knowledgeable folks can come up with. I have followed this site for a couple of years now, and have every confidence in the brain trust that is UHH.

texasdan78070 Loc: Texas Hill Country

Wish I could help. My pics didn't come out very good either.

Kf5hdr Loc: Alvin Texas

Yeah, I tried all kinds of settings. Nothing came out good. Shooting a Nikon D80 w/18-70 lens.

bparr1 Loc: Carthage, TN

Another poster on this site mentioned ISO200 at 1/200th of a sec at f/16. haven't tried it but it's a starting point.

cheineck Loc: Hobe Sound, FL

Hitch a ride on the next shuttle.

Wahawk Loc: NE IA

The 'Sunny 16' rule is a great starting point!! Just imagine you are shooting a subject at 'high noon' and use those settings for good exposure of the moon if there are no clouds or fog in front.

woodweasel Loc: bellingham Wa

Thank you for the effort. It makes me feel like I may not be such a goof after all

mechengvic Loc: SoCalo

When shooting the moon sharpness is always the issue. You're shooting through almost a quarter of a million miles of space, you have a contrasty environment (bright moon, dark sky), and believe it or not, that sucker is moving fast!

Obviously the objective with the supermoon is to get it as close up as possible. So you're using your biggest zoom. Problem is, at that magnification, a slower shutter speed will show motion blur. Luckily the moon is far enough that you can shoot at fast f-stop because you have plenty of DOF at that distance, and the moon is bright enough for a faster shutter speed. The hard part is fine focusing. It isn't automatically infinity...

Set your light meter to spot so you're measuring just the brightness of the moon, stepping down a half or a full stop can help with contrast, manual focus, and you need a magnified view to fine focus (most likely the main cause of unsharp images). If your live view has a digital magnification feature, that is your best bet.

I shot this on Friday through hazy skies with my Olympus EM1 at ISO 100 and Canon Fd 400mm f4.5 with 2xTC. f9 and 1/30, which I believe was a little on the slow side because you can see a bit of motion blur. Cropped and shopped.

Friday's super moon

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Wall-E Loc: Phoenix, AZ

Actually, it's the 'Looney 11' rule.
At f11, the shutter speed should be 1/ISO.
I found a discussion of the rule over here:
http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/TRIPOD/TRIPOD4.HTM

bparr1 Loc: Carthage, TN

Thanks Wall-E. I saved this web site.

woodweasel Loc: bellingham Wa

Thank you Victor. I will try again to night. Appreciate the appiture idea. I have some time to experiment before the next Supermoon in August. Thanks aagain

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

High clouds not withstanding it came out like this with the above settings.

At least I get to practice every 2 weeks...

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Straight Shooter Loc: Newfoundland, Canada

I find the best way to get sharp focus is to put focus to manual, turn on live view, enlarge live view image to maximum, and fine tune the focus there. When it's set, you can turn off live view to shoot. Patience and practice make perfect!

mechengvic Loc: SoCalo

:thumbup:

woodweasel Loc: bellingham Wa

Thank you straight shooter. I will give them a try tonight.