Why are my moon edges jagged?

I took some moon pics last night with my new 70-200 f4 IS and canon 1.4 extender. I usually use my sigma 80-400, and haven't noticed this problem. This is a 100% crop, straight out of camera (so don't worry about the overexposure, etc)

I used live view and remote trigger. I'm interested in why the lower edges of the moon look jagged.

Did you use IS in this shot?

kooimanj wrote in post #11688597
Did you use IS in this shot?

No - IS turned off, manual focus, tripod, etc...

Hmmmmmm. Ihave had this issue with IS on but I am running out of answers. Maybe turn ISO down. I have been shooting at f/10 1/100 sec at ISO of 100

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It looks to me like IS was on.

Well, I'll try again and double check the IS, but I thought I turned it off when I switched to manual focus.

Kasrielle wrote in post #11688685
Well, I'll try again and double check the IS, but I thought I turned it off when I switched to manual focus.

Ive mad that mistake before.

Me to, several times.

Maybe the moon isn’t smooth?

jimmy637 wrote in post #11688757
Maybe the moon isn’t smooth?

Looks smooth enough to go 4 wheeling.

The moon isn't smooth, but what your seeing could be atmospheric distortion. Also its not focused exact and from the exif there's not really a reason to be stopped down to F/10 to shoot the moon, use F4 thru F8 and get your shutter speed up a little. I'd use a speed of something more like 1/500th to 1/1000th myself.

There are a couple of tricks to help reduce this effect and get a very clean shot of the moon.

First try to shoot it at its highest point in the sky, typically between 00:00 and 01:00 hours. Also helps to check your shooting location on www.cleardarksky.com to make sure your shooting on a night with excellent "transparency" and "seeing" conditions. Higher altitudes and being away from any bodies of water or large parking lots/towns will help reduce the effect of thermals.

Once the physical problems are reduced as much as possible the next step is to shoot several frames and then stack them using a free program called REGISTAX. Or I usually just do it manually in photoshop. Unless you shoot under perfect conditions each frame will have slight distortions, stacking the photos averages out these distortions and helps you get a nice, sharp image.

The same technique is used to photograph planets except most people use hundreds of frames for planets and just a few will work fine on the moon.

EWhytsell wrote in post #11689031
The moon isn't smooth, but what your seeing could be atmospheric distortion. Also its not focused exact and from the exif there's not really a reason to be stopped down to F/10 to shoot the moon, use F4 thru F8 and get your shutter speed up a little. I'd use a speed of something more like 1/500th to 1/1000th myself.

There are a couple of tricks to help reduce this effect and get a very clean shot of the moon.

First try to shoot it at its highest point in the sky, typically between 00:00 and 01:00 hours. Also helps to check your shooting location on www.cleardarksky.com to make sure your shooting on a night with excellent "transparency" and "seeing" conditions. Higher altitudes and being away from any bodies of water or large parking lots/towns will help reduce the effect of thermals.

Once the physical problems are reduced as much as possible the next step is to shoot several frames and then stack them using a free program called REGISTAX. Or I usually just do it manually in photoshop. Unless you shoot under perfect conditions each frame will have slight distortions, stacking the photos averages out these distortions and helps you get a nice, sharp image.

The same technique is used to photograph planets except most people use hundreds of frames for planets and just a few will work fine on the moon.

Thanks for the tips. I've never used that fast a shutter speed - I'll try that. And I've also never tried stacking - I'll check it out.

Well, I just tried a couple more and I can literally see the atmospheric distortion with live view increased. These are shot at ISO 100, f8, f7.1, f5,6 and shutter speed at 500 or more. IS is off - I triple checked. I'll wait a couple more hours until it's higher and see if that reduces the distortion.

The focus on this lens is also lots more "touchy" than on my 80-400. The difference between in focus and not is teeny tiny, and very hard to find...

Do you have sharpening turned up in the camera? Oversharpening round shapes can often result in jagged edges...