Shooting the moon 400d

Me again a nice full moon last night so I thought this would test my ability to adjust exposure etc with my 400d ... not great shots with my cheap 75-300mm usm MKII 1:4-5.6 but I guess that's to be expected - or is it ? ... I'm pretty sure at full zoom I'm expecting tooooo much from this lens but I don't really know. I also noticed that on full zoom when I manually focus on the most distant object (ie infinity) I have to turn the manual focus ring BACK a touch ... is this correct or should I return it to the shop I bought it from ? (auto focus finds the same position)! I 'm almost thinking that there's little point in buying a cheap zoom lens if it's as soft as this on full zoom I'll never use it ! ? In my case it was down to money - I really can't afford, or justify, spending big bucks on a long lens but really wanted that extra zoom option. Any advice very welcome ... Best Roger

Can you post an example image please?

I'm not familiar with the 75-300, but it is one of Canon's cheapest lenses so perhaps you shouldn't be surprised if it's soft at the full zoom. My Sigma 18-200 is a very handy walk-around lens, and it's fine and short and medium lengths, but at 200mm it's very soft indeed.

Focussing on infinity - yes, that's normal. Autofocus lenses are designed to allow the elements to move beyond the point where infinity focus is achieved, so that the AF mechanism can detect that it's gone too far and can back up a bit. (This is all highly technical language, you understand! )

I can't comment on whether your lens is too soft at 300mm to be worth having. Some example images would help.

This is the shot i took with the same lens and camera
http://www.flickr.com/​photos/blargynog/13491​39424/

I have this lens. It does not produce great IQ, which gets slightly worse at the tele-end from ~200-300, but you get what you pay for.

I don't believe I am qualified to give you technical advice on how to shoot the moon, but what I will say is you are likely to get better results with a more decent zoom, or an L if you can afford one. I am getting the 70-200 2.8L IS next month, and will most likely sell the 75-300. Good luck!

colin, that shot is not bad at all! Did you crop?

I've seen - and taken - much worse shots of the moon.

As you can see there is no comparison with Colin's shot but maybe I didn't use the correct settings ... I think on this shot I used M I'll probably try again and fiddle with the settings some more .... thanks to everyone for their comments ... Roger

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^ good first try - but it looks out of focus. have you also applied sharpening on it?

rogertb wrote in post #4002213
As you can see there is no comparison with Colin's shot but maybe I didn't use the correct settings ... I think on this shot I used M I'll probably try again and fiddle with the settings some more .... thanks to everyone for their comments ... Roger

EXIF says 1/320; ISO 100, f/5.6 @ 300mm.

Now - I'm not sure what you were using for support here, but 1/320 is too slow for mere mortals to hand-hold at 300mm. Options - tripod or faster shutter speed. If you go with the second option, you can't open up any wider, so you'll have to bump the ISO to compensate. You can go to 400 easily without getting too much noise.

As muscleflex said, focus could be off too (although I'm not discounting a camera shake or vibration issue). Could be your lens is missing focus, so have a go with manual focusing if necessary. If you can't get a shot as good as Colin's, no matter what you try, it could be a lens calibration issue.

hey man, your shots dont look too bad. i have a 70-200 L and shot worse shots than that. keep improving though! did you hand hold or tripod?

Yep i used a tripod and the self timer ... manual focus. The iso wont affect the softness though will it and please, forgive my ignorance, what's the "... lens calibration..." ?

Here's a shot I just took in daylight I increased ISO to 400 plus a little exposure compensation and manually focussed (I thought the auto focus version was a smidgen softer) ... I guess this about as good as I'm going to get with such a cheap lens.

Thanks for your time Roger

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^ hmm - that looks way soft!!!

also for the moonshot, make sure you use mirror lockup. the mere vibration the mirror slap produces is enough to register a shake at 300mm

If you have the tripod handy, do the self timer and 1/60 of a second at most. If you don't have a tripod, you won't get a clear shot. I've tried. Rest the camera on something if you can.

rogertb wrote in post #4002820
Yep i used a tripod and the self timer ... manual focus. The iso wont affect the softness though will it and please, forgive my ignorance, what's the "... lens calibration..." ?

Here's a shot I just took in daylight I increased ISO to 400 plus a little exposure compensation and manually focussed (I thought the auto focus version was a smidgen softer) ... I guess this about as good as I'm going to get with such a cheap lens.

Thanks for your time Roger

ISO won't directly affect image sharpness, but if you raise the ISO, you can increase the shutter speed (or decrease the aperture) correspondingly without affecting total exposure: 1/320 s @ f/5.6 @ ISO 100 = 1/640 s @ f/5.6 @ ISO 200 = 1/640 s @ f/8 @ ISO 400, etc., and a faster shutter speed can mitigate camera or subject movement problems.

Lens calibration is where the focusing mechanism and/or optical alignment of the lens elements is checked, and corrected if necessary.

That image of the car does look soft, so something is not right. The lens will perform better optically stopped down a little, but the EXIF for this shows f/45! If that is real, then you could well be into diffraction territory - another problem area.

Try f/11, with a shutter speed of no less than 1/500s if carefully hand held, or maybe slower with a good tripod. Adjust ISO (and maybe aperture +/- a stop, that is, from f/8 to f/16) in order to get correct exposure.

Don't write off the lens quite yet - you may just need to find its "happy place" .

Additional thoughts:
Do you have other lenses? Are they sharp? I'm just wondering if it is a body problem. Another issue could be that if you are manually focusing, and the viewfinder dioptric adjustment is off, it could be difficult to set correctly. That's the little adjustment wheel on the viewfinder housing used to compensate for your own eyesight. Adjust it so that the camera data displayed in the viewfinder is as sharp as possible.