GloJo,
And All interested
A simple search on Google turned up this very good web site on Lunar Photography
http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/howtophoto/
I am not trying to get in your face at all but you made some major statements in your PM, to me, without substantiation, regarding hand holding
This webpage goes against what you claim point by point. Am I missing something here??
Could you please be more forthcoming with data. Others here have asked the same question. I defer now to the Managment??
Bullfrogs

Hi Bullfrog,
I am VERY MUCH a person that simply enjoys taking pictures of what I see as opposed to framing something and then checking to ensure everything is just right before pressing the button. I say this because there are experts on this forum that would completely baffle me with their knowledge

Moon shots.
I was very apprehensive about taking pictures of something when it was dark... It just seemed 'weird' but I just set the camera to manual and played with the settings although I did leave the focusing on a specific setting.

The complete details of the image I have posted is 1/250th F8 and ISO 1600

This was with my old D200 and I had to tone the thing down in Photoshop as some parts of it were slightly burnt out.

Hand holding...
I have to be very honest here and I am 64yrs of age and have a very severe spinal injury and if I stand up and want to hold the camera I place the crutches under my armpits and then quickly raise up the lens. I am on morphine medication which helps to control the pain I am in but I am NO SUPERMAN... I have no secret formula for steadying my hands, it is just something I have had to do over the years. The lens is the VERY heavy Nikon 500mm F4 VR lens which means it has a stability feature but looking at the image of the Moon it was shot with my old Sigma 500 lens which was still VERY heavy but did not have any stabilisation.

When lining up the lens I ram my upper arm, elbow into my upper torso\chest, breath out and snap. NO WAY can I keep the lens held in position, but I can track peregrine falcon, plus fast moving fighter aircraft which rarely and expectantly over fly our property.

All I can say is it takes lots of practice but it is well worth the effort.

I am very sorry I have no secret answer or suggestions

Hi Burtron,
It was a Sigma 500mm lens but I always try to have a faster shutter speed than this one. 1/250th on that size lens and hand held is usually a non starter. I was just plain LUCKY, no skill, no bragging rights and no pretending I could do that day in day out.

Using a tripod is obviously going to be easier but we can only play with the cards we are dealt. My latest 500 lens has VR which makes things slightly easier but what I gain on the roundabout, I loose on the swing as the beast is slightly heavier than the Sigma. :(

Hand holding a camera is a skill and it must surely be all about firm or sturdy bases..

I am NOT in the corner that demands you do it in any specific way, or in any specific manner. To me it is all about getting a support as sturdy as possible, I jam the upper supporting arm against my body and use the upper arm area to support the lens making sure the camera is to a degree resting against my cheek! is this the correct way?? I have no idea but it works for me, but if folks have a better method then by crikey I would be the very first to try it.

When snapping the Moon I have used shutter speeds as fast as 1/1000th sec and they have still at times been too bright but I tend to go with at least 1/500th.

For those that have 300mm lens, have you tried using converters to get the subject closer? I have one for my camera but cannot get on with it and feel that what I gain in magnification, I loose in detail, but that is me.

This is my pathetic efforts at snapping the International Space Station

Hand held, but this time at 1/500th F8 and I see that the OEV was -2

You are mostly correct, glojo. The term used by astronomers to describe the stability of the earth's atmosphere is "seeing." The other characteristic is how clear the air is and astronomers call that "transparency" for obvious reasons.

Seeing can be tricky. Humidity and smog can actually make the atmosphere more stable than less. The annual Winter Star Party in the Florida Keys takes place under high humidity conditions, but the seeing can be some of the best in the world.

The usual rule of thumb for maximum magnification for a telescope is about 50 power per inch of aperture. But during one opposition of Mars and fantastic seeing, I was using twice that - 100x per inch - on my old orange tube 8" Celestron and guys with bigger scopes were working at magnifications over 1400x!

The real question for this discussion is whether seeing can actually blur the sort of photographs most people on this site are taking and I think the answer is no. Seeing tends to blur small detail which is why deep sky observing (large angular diameter objects like nebulae, galaxies, etc) can be very good on cold, winter nights when the stars are twinkling like crazy. If you look at the moon under those conditions, you can actually watch the roiling of the earth's atmosphere as the areas of differing indices of refraction move across the face of the satellite.

Very few on here are working with high resolution photography and the image scale is large enough and exposures short enough that blurring should not occur. If you are looking for sub-arcsecond detail, then most of the guys are using video recording and image stacking which masks out atmospheric turbulence.