Moon at 600mm

[480sparky66 65]

The weather certainly has an effect. Any air movement causes turbulence. This is known by astronomers as 'seeing'.

High winds can cause a lot of dust in the air.... Forest fires can place a lot of particulate matter in the air... Even a volcanic eruption on the other side of the earth can affect your images of the moon.

Another big factor is your altitude. The higher you are, the less atmosphere for you have to shoot through and the less particulate matter in the air to have to contend with. This is why professional observatories are built on top of mountains.

Also, make sure you shoot when the moon is closest to the zenith. Shooting the moon near the horizon causes you to shoot through that much more atmosphere.

 

[nineoneeighttony]

Yes, I manually focus on LV zoomed all the way in, tripod and either remote trigger or delay.

 

[LizardKing]

I'm out then

Here's what I do: Wait until there's one of those really clear nights when you see the moon really up in the night sky. Set camera on tripod, manual focus using LiveView, set aperture to something aroudn f/8 - f/9 as I believe somewhere around there is the sweet spot for my lens... Set ISO to 100 or 200 at most, and then take a couple test shots until I get the proper Shutterspeed... Really don't do much more than that. So, maybe, in your case, it's the lens to blame.

 

[nineoneeighttony]

Thanks for the tips!

 

[Ernicus]

My moon shots always sucked, although I have not tried that much. Might try again. but it's a full moon tonight I think, usually best at 3/4 I hear. All I have is th 80-200 2.8 I borrowed. I guess I can give that a whirl.

 

[nineoneeighttony]

I am going to go give it another shot with the sigma and see what happens

 

[nineoneeighttony]

Ok, well, shot it with the Sigma 70-200 w/2x TC and nothing changed, tried everyones suggestions, I will try again with a less full moon... or when its gets cold out. Thanks everyone for the advise.