I was deceived by the amount of light coming off the moon at night. My first attempts were looonnng exposures but I found with this
that 1/80th at F8.0 was a huge surprise.
this is what the moon looks like in Iceland in the middle of the day...
EXIF
02-11-2006 17:23:04
Canon EOS 5D
shutter speed 0.5 sec
exp prog. manual
aperture f22
ISO 50
focal length 560mm
lens 70-200L f2.8 IS, Canon 1.4X II, Kenko 2X
Manfrotto CarbonOne tripod.
post processing.. Levels, Curves, resize, USM, save for web.
post your best moonshot, let's see how the moon looks like in your part of the world
This is a cool shot. But, with the reach you have created with the two extenders, I'd imagine you could get much better results by shooting with a higher ISO, wider aperture, and faster shutter speed. At 1/2 sec exposure time, you're getting significant (I think) motion blur of the moon at 560mm.
Even if you really need the f/22 to minimize lens artifacts from the stacked extenders, try shooting at ISO 200-400. You'll get a sharper image from the 4-8x faster shutter speed.
I couldn't get as close with my 400mm solution, but I think these shots:
demonstrate what I'm talking about.
You guys need to get some telescopes! Shooting the moon with a long lens is very tough (though there are some outstanding efforts here). My portfolio has some of my better lunar shots (through a scope) as examples.
What your zoom lenses can do better than lunar shots is capturing some of the brighter deep sky objects, though you need a guiding scope as a tracking platform (to zero out the earth's rotation for long exposures). Here's a recent example taken with my 70-200L f/4:
The Orion Nebula (M42). It's amazing to many people that a common camera lens can capture a shot like this, but most people don't realize that many deep sky objects like this are large - larger than the full moon, but many, many times fainter. The above Orion Neb shot is the result of a two minute exposure at ISO400. Not bad for a hack.
