I was all set to try and get a shot of the conjunction of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars this morning. I was hoping my 600mm reflex lens would have enough FOV to get them all in. Nope, sorry, couldn't get even one of the planets in with the moon. I shot a few pics of the moon and came inside to see if I got a keeper or two. I was shooting at ISO 1600 at 1/60 and the fixed aperture of the lens, f8. Nope, the highlights were all blown. Went back out again and started increasing the shutter speed. Came back inside, connected to the computer and started reviewing this latest group of shots. To my surprise, I didn't start getting the highlight details until I reached 1/640th. I was hoping that such a high shutter speed would kill any camera shake, and it may have, but the best shot, below, was either out of focus (I was using the distance marks on the lens as the focusing ring will go quite a bit past the distance mark for infinity) or still too much camera shake shooting hand held.
The weather forecast is for clear skies again tomorrow morning. I'll set the alarm for 5 am again and put the camera on my tripod this time and adjust the focus ever so slightly between shots and hope I can get the lens in focus this time. Once I can get the focus I'll try and get a shot of Jupiter just to see what the lens will do at a distance of 500,000,000 miles.
Like I said in the title, I learned something.