Shooting the Moon

[Rickbb]

Tried some shots of the full moon, not really happy with them. Anyone have some tips/tricks to get sharper images? Played in LR with exposure, contrast, sharping, cropped the image some as well, etc. Even did a HDR merge, (which was horrible, you could see large pixels everywhere).

Shot with D90, 300mm, 1/125 f/16, tripod mounted.

 

[ronlane]

Yeah, back your f-stop to f/11 or f/8 and raise your shutter a little. Even with it on a tripod, remember that the light is just reflected sunlight. Then use the live view and zoom in to 100% and manually focus it.

That should help and then don't over process in LR or PS, including sharpening. (Hint: search for YouTube video's on post processing moon shots.)

Note: Full moon shots are not going to be the best shots because they are flat lighting. The waxing and waning moons show more detail because you have shades from the lakes and mountain ranges.