The Moon with Tokina AT-X 80-400mm

I had a go at capturing the full moon on Wednesday this week with the Tokina AT-X 80-400mm. I shot RAW+ and did some adjustments (mostly sharpening) in iPhoto on the RAW file, before exporting to jpeg. What do you think? This is the very first time I deal with RAW files, so I have quite a steep learning curve to get things right.





Thank you!
Bjørn

To be honest I think it could be a lot sharper. However, atmospheric conditions will play a large part in this so it may not be anything that could be helped.

The full moon is very hard to do well - the absence of shadows means detail is lost, even if the image itself is sharp.

This one would look a lot better smaller, IMO.

What did you do for sharpening?

I took this one a few days ago. It's the best I've achieved with the K-5 and the Pentax SMC-A 400mm F5.6, and I'm not sure I can do much better. It was the best of about 15 shots that night. Remote delayed release, obviously. Careful focusing. Moon quite high in the sky. No high pressure haze at low level for the light to have to fight through.

When you're pushing at the limits of lens and sensor, it does get tricky, for sure.

Thank you for your comment! When attempting the moon shots I used a tripod, turned the SR off and used the 2 second self-timer. I will definitely make further attempts at getting better shots of the moon, atmospheric conditions could possibly be a major factor here.

Bjørn

How high in the sky was it when you took it?

Conditions were quite good, I thought, when the moon was full the other day.

I used the sharpening tool in iPhoto (100% sharpening + added contrast). I experimented with different apertures and took about 70 photos. The weather was partly clouded, so the atmospheric conditions were probably not optimal. Luckily I will get other chances of capturing the moon

No idea what iPhoto does for sharpening, but adding contrast always make it look worse in my experience.

Partly cloudy is not a problem, provided theres no high level cloud (can be very difficult to see), and provided obviously the cloud is not obscuring the moon (which it doesn't appear to be in your case).

Much better than cloudless high pressure nights, where there's a low level haze that's ruins everything.

I took the photo at roughly 20 minutes before midnight Wednesday 12. October (British time), the moon was high in the sky.

ChrisA: I seem to be one step behind you here... I took the photos with AF on. Could that possibly be a problem (should I have used manual focus)?

A full moon is the hardest to do as there is a lot of glare.
half to three quarters will give you much more detail.

Definitely worth a try, unless you've already verified that the AF is set up exactly right. Accurate focusing is so critical.

The 2s timer is good, the 3s remote release would be better, but I don't think it's made much difference in your case here.

By the way, you don't need to switch SR off. The camera does that for you automatically in any of the delayed or remote modes.

I thought I'd done well until I saw this one, from a Canon 7D and the 100-400L.

Pentax does ok ... LINK

Yes, I know you've done some excellent ones, Mike. But that extra 100mm does make a difference.

I tried one with my 50D, Sigma 100-300mm f4 and 1.4x TC the other night.

Horrible, hardly any detail at all. Seems the inbuilt SR makes quite a difference.

Mike's shot is absolutely streets ahead of the Canon. No contest.