mooning for first time

Other than the focus looking soft, it also looks as though there is a lot of noise.
What focal length did you have the lens at?
What F/stop?
What ISO?
What shutter speed?

When I increase the size of my browser window to get a closer look at them, it looks as though you tried to sharpen using Unsharp Mask or High Pass Filter and over did it. Are these also cropped and enlarged?

tkerr wrote in post #10063730
Other than the focus looking soft, it also looks as though there is a lot of noise.
What focal length did you have the lens at?
What F/stop?
What ISO?
What shutter speed?

When I increase the size of my browser window to get a closer look at them, it looks as though you tried to sharpen using Unsharp Mask or High Pass Filter and over did it. Are these also cropped and enlarged?

cropped, but not enlarged. cleaned up with LR3.

or try again when i have a tripod to keep things steady.

lens was a sigma 70-300 (the DG non APO). the iso was at 100. F stop of 5.6 and shutter speed of 1/200.

i'll try to squeeze out something better with LR3 again.

dontcallmeash wrote in post #10064020
cropped, but not enlarged. cleaned up with LR3.

or try again when i have a tripod to keep things steady.

lens was a sigma 70-300 (the DG non APO). the iso was at 100. F stop of 5.6 and shutter speed of 1/200.

i'll try to squeeze out something better with LR3 again.

Can you post the original untouched?

I can make it look good for that size just by running a USM 300% 0.5px. Focus looks good enough, but, since it is a reduced size Jpeg I cannot make it look good and enlarge it to the same size as your cropped version of it.. For that, I would need the Original RAW image.

Take your original RAW and run an USM Filter at 300%, 0.5px, 0 Threshold and nothing else. See what you get then.
A common mistake many of us make is thinking we need to do more than we really do, then we end up over-processing our images.

awesome, thanks!

i'll go play with post-processing when i get back from work.

dontcallmeash wrote in post #10064020
cropped, but not enlarged. cleaned up with LR3.

or try again when i have a tripod to keep things steady.

lens was a sigma 70-300 (the DG non APO). the iso was at 100. F stop of 5.6 and shutter speed of 1/200.

i'll try to squeeze out something better with LR3 again.

You don't need a tripod for the moon. It's the brightest object in the night sky. My recently posted 1/4 moon was at 1/1000th sec hand held.

Desertraptor wrote in post #10070796
You don't need a tripod for the moon. It's the brightest object in the night sky. My recently posted 1/4 moon was at 1/1000th sec hand held.

You dont NEED a tripod but it can really help. Between using a tripod, remote shutter release, and mirror lockup every little bit can help you eek out a little more sharpness and let you blow the image up even larger. Plus using a tripod allows you to manually focus on the moon, which is pretty much required if you want to have a good focus, as the camera's autofocus isn't going to be perfect on the moon. The moon has several different focal planes as well, as it gets towards the edges it is farther from us so the focal plane changes, so you really need to manually focus the image in order to get the focus as sharp as possible where you want it.

zeldaboy101 wrote in post #10074128
You dont NEED a tripod but it can really help. Between using a tripod, remote shutter release, and mirror lockup every little bit can help you eek out a little more sharpness and let you blow the image up even larger. Plus using a tripod allows you to manually focus on the moon, which is pretty much required if you want to have a good focus, as the camera's autofocus isn't going to be perfect on the moon. The moon has several different focal planes as well, as it gets towards the edges it is farther from us so the focal plane changes, so you really need to manually focus the image in order to get the focus as sharp as possible where you want it.

Ditto!

Even though the Moon is the brightest object in the sky, using a High ISO with fast f/stop to get a faster shutter speed, you still need a very steady hand which not all of us have. Especially when holding a camera with a relatively large lens looking upward toward the moon.
Most of the time the exposures used are relatively slow.
Use a stable tripod along with a remote shutter. Mirror lock will prevent that slight vibration that can be noticeable in brighter Lunar images. For an even sharper image use a slow f/stop (f/8-f/9) and low ISO. Even then I will still bracket my exposures, often finding the one I use is the one that is stopped down -1/3 stop.