These are concerned with freezing motion, with blur visible either before or after the flash.

If you're not attempting to capture moving subjects, with the intention of also capturing the blur associated with their movement during a long exposure, then leading or trailing curtain sync is of no relevance to you, and you should leave the flash set to the default, namely leading curtain sync.

I would commend page 56 of the AF360FGZ manual, which is available here, if you don't have it.

Although in that paragraph on trailing-curtain, it would probably be better to think of the blur as "behind" the target, not "before" it. "Before" is correct, in the sense that the blur takes place before the flash.

If this isn't crystal clear to you, you definitely should not be trying to use such effects at such an important event as a 100th birthday party. It's an awful long wait till the next one if it doesn't go right.

Very much so.

Exposure in particular. The amount of light coming back from a moon that isn't quite full, like yours, is an amazing amount less than when it's bang on full. I don't have the numbers to hand, but when the reflection is as direct as possible, it's a lot brighter.

'Not quite full' is better, though, because the slightly oblique light gives rise to shadows, which bring out the texture better and make the picture look sharper, even though it isn't.

I've had four or five goes now, and my results have been very variable. I get about 1 in 3 properly in focus, even though the camera thinks they all are.

This one is fairly typical of what I get at 400mm, when they come out Ok. 1/80 at F11 that one.

I love the way the moon is rotated through about 90 degrees, viewed from the other hemisphere.

The main thing wrong with the one at F6.3, I think, is that it's overexposed, and not quite in focus.

Here's the one I said you should shrink and sharpen a bit. I also brought the exposure down a stop.

Well, by the time you get the bang and shake from the mirror coming down, the shutter is long since shut, so no it wouldn't.

I think that second one is quite a bit better. Is it unsharpened?

If so, try shrinking it to about 4/5 of that size (using 'bicubic sharper'), and applying just a tiny bit of USM - 75/1/1 for instance.

I think you'll be pleased - I don't think it gets much better than that without a telescope.

I've seen a Bigma shot of the moon over at Pentaxforums.com that was a bit crisper than this one, so I'd say that although this isn't at all bad, you can still get it better.

Having had several attempts at this shot myself, albeit with only 400mm, I'd say that 1/45 is a little on the slow side, especially since the shot looks a little overexposed to me.

In my experience, focus confirmation from the camera is not enough to guarantee that the focusing is as perfect as it can be, and the longer the focal length, the shorter exposure you need to guarantee no movement blur.

Assuming you were using the 2s or 3s mirror up delay, I'd guess that these are more likely to be responsible for the slight lack of sharpness than the tripod.

You can hardly claim 'macro' with a subject that big...

I can see I need to plug my CRT back in and see what the second one looks like in comparison. Certainly on the new one, I'd agree with 'terrible' for the first one.

I could easily enough have lifted the shadow detail in the second one, without increasing the noise in the sky (I did try it, just didn't like it quite as much).

I think it raises an interesting issue, though - all those monitors out there, many of them 'calibrated' (my old one was, too, by the way - it just wasn't as bright as the new ones).... who's 'right'?

Just to return to that picture of Melbourne by night, thought I'd show you the version I've just re-edited, with the original from before the monitor change.

This is the original version:




And now, with the brightness adjusted for the new monitor (no noise reduction applied - just brightness and contrast):




Interesting, huh? The top one on my old monitor looks like the bottom one on the new one.

It does look a bit grainy.

How do we tell whether this is a monitor limitation, or something else?

Ah.

Thanks for the link... all is now clear.