Lens help....perhaps?

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steveinhants

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Steve
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Hi all,

Recently, after viewing a thread where someone had taken a great shot of the moon, I tried the same. Anyway, it failed - at them time it seemed that I had motion blur. Last night I had another clear night, so I double checked everything - tripod was secure, remote switch in place etc...
Anyway, to cut a long story short it still appeared as a ball of cotton wool (well almost). I am beginning to wonder if I have a problem with my lens. As I was focusing last night it appeared to me that the moon was still out of focus despite trying manual and auto. Does anyone have any thoughts on this please?
My setup: Canon EOS 20d, 300mm Tamron lens, f11, iso 400, 1/200sec.

Many thanks,
Steve
 
Weird one....

The lens works OK in nice daylight on long range subjects?

F11
ISO400
1/200 sec

?

why F11?

surely if you let more light in - say F8 you could have reduced the ISO?

anyway, so when manually focusing looking through the viewfinder you were never able to get the moon sharp?
 
kennysarmy said:
Weird one....

The lens works OK in nice daylight on long range subjects?

F11
ISO400
1/200 sec

?

why F11?

surely if you let more light in - say F8 you could have reduced the ISO?

anyway, so when manually focusing looking through the viewfinder you were never able to get the moon sharp?
Click to expand...

Hi,
Well now you've asked I'm not certain. I have a lot of photos taken with this and more thank a few seem to have a lack of defined focus.
The reason I went for f11 was mainly because I was following a tutorial and the previous attempts had been at f8.
The actual exposure was fine and I figured at 1/200 I would minimize any chance of blurring....
 
Could it be that the moon is just overexposed?

I've not photographed the moon much at all, but I did mine handheld, and with autofocus. The following are the settings I used:
f7.1
ISO200
1/640
300mm.
 
Results were OK. Best I could do at 300mm, at least. Here's a crop:

4403106429_675c506129.jpg


I'm in Norton mate. I won't ask where you are now. :D
 
Did you use mirror lock up, it could be vibration from the mirror movement causing the blur. If you could post one of the images this may help to work out what the problem is.
 
steveinhants said:
Yes, mirror lock up was used. I don't have an image to hand at the moment. I posted my first attempt the other night here:
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=207060
Click to expand...

I think you've got both poor focus and camera shake on that linked pic.

Rule of thumb says you should have a minimum shutter speed of, focal length x crop factor, ie 300 x 1.6 = 480. That's minimum use 1/1000sec to be safe, unless your lens has some kind of image stabilisation.

Using centre-point AF should nail it.
 
HoppyUK said:
I think you've got both poor focus and camera shake on that linked pic.

Rule of thumb says you should have a minimum shutter speed of, focal length x crop factor, ie 300 x 1.6 = 480. That's minimum use 1/1000sec to be safe, unless your lens has some kind of image stabilisation.

Using centre-point AF should nail it.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback - I did use centre point AF as well.....result was exactly the same.
 
Trying to AF on the moon is tricky as there is so little contrast for the system to get a handle on, MF is usually the way to go for Moon shots, can you use Live view with magnification, mirror lockup and timer release is also good, assuming the wind isn't rocking things.
 
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