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Behold the power of the Nikkor 70-300G. Bear in mind that this is the "best" i have managed to date. Whats goign on here. It looks in focus through the lense?

[img]http://www.fototime.com/{5387BCD2-9DBB-4BC1-BD15-5E0ED7BBF7B1}/picture.JPG[/img]

Hmmm... It doesn't look optimal does it...

What ISO was that taken on - it looks a little grainy...

That said, my first few moon shots thru the 70-300G looked like that... The shots from the 80-400 VR look a lot better

Did you use a tripod for your shot?

Hi Willy Wombat,

the "shooting data" shows 1/60 of second shutter speed , f 40, 270mm !
Well that is not suitable for what you are trying to do.
Try something like 1/3oo sec , f 8 or so.
Your shutter speed is way too long, it results in blurryness.

HTH,
CD

Willy wombat
christiand is right. Exposure for a full moon is similar to sunny day on Earth. Hard to believe but true.

leek wrote: Did you use a tripod for your shot?

Yes i was using a tripod. ISO from memory was 400?

christiand wrote:1. Try something like 1/3oo sec , f 8 or so.

I will give it a go - thanks

christiand wrote:2. Your shutter speed is way too long, it results in blurryness.

Mmmm i though this might have been the case. I was having over exposure and meetering problems. I will try to bump up shutter speed next time. I wish i hadknown this before the weekend. Saw some lovely full moon rises over the ocean. All of those pics were also blurry.

Many thanks guys

Here is one that I shot for a bit of fun a few nights ago through fairly decent cloud with the 70-300G tripod mounted. The exposure was 1/2.5s f10 ISO200. I thought I had the lens set to 300mm but exif reads 200mm. The cloud was moving quickly enough to cause quite large metering variations (5s - 1/30s) hence the slightly overexposed areas. There is some movement of the moon evident due to the slow shutter speed. The moon was moving from 5 o'clock to 11 o'clock.
This image is a 1200x something crop reduced to 800x500 for web.
I was actually suprised by this one as everything was conspiring against me. I would have thought that the cloud and the motion of earth/moon would have would have had a greater affect on detail. Forget the fact that it is probably the cheapest tele zoom available.

My suggestion is to get a tripod under your camera and use a remote. This lens is capable of producing good (not brilliant) results if it is stabilised.



Cheers

Matt

Great shot Matt , I think the things you said were working against you help make the shot

wow matt thats a great shot. Might give the disowned lens (70-300G) another go. Thanks!

Thanks Guys. That was not my reason for posting it. I was just trying to demonstrate that the 70-300G can produce decent results if it is
stabilised. It will never be in the league of a 70-200VR, 80-400VR or other quality lenses.

I think that the 70-300G is a little undeserving of its reputation. Most of the time it seems that problems can be attributed to operator error. There have been plenty of excellent examples of what this lens is capable of in this forum. BTW, I think that I had +1EV dialled in in manual mode for this shot, but because of the variable cloud cover, that sort of went out the window. I suspect their was a little luck involved as far as exposure went

Cheers

It comes to preference matt. Prefer the kit len and my 50 mm F1.8 on most of my shots. Not that the 70-300G is particularly bad, just not really enjoyable to use compared to the others.

Willy wombat wrote:

christiand wrote:1. Try something like 1/3oo sec , f 8 or so.

I will give it a go - thanks

christiand wrote:2. Your shutter speed is way too long, it results in blurryness.

Mmmm i though this might have been the case. I was having over exposure and meetering problems. I will try to bump up shutter speed next time. I wish i hadknown this before the weekend. Saw some lovely full moon rises over the ocean. All of those pics were also blurry.

Many thanks guys

G'day Pokey,
One thing that may help is to use spot metering and meter on the moon itself... When I took my shots, I set F8, spot meter right smack on the moon (didn't think to adjust the spot size in the menu settings, otherwise I probably would have) and just adjusted the shutter to suit, no probs with exposure, using 1/200 F8 ISO200. Give it a go with spot I think that'll help...

nito wrote:It comes to preference matt. Prefer the kit len and my 50 mm F1.8 on most of my shots. Not that the 70-300G is particularly bad, just not really enjoyable to use compared to the others.

I would have to agree with that. Like you, I do not enjoy the 70-300G lens much so I rarely ever pull it out (usually only to exercise it), preferring to use my wide and normal primes - not really suitable for a moon shot. That particular shot was taken because of a thread that was running at the time on, you guessed it, moon shots. I thought, "hey I haven't tried a moon shot yet" so I got out and had a go. Even my kit lens spends most its time sitting next to my 70-300 and 50/1.8 (I have a 50/1.4) on the shelf.

Cheers

mudder wrote:
G'day Pokey,
One thing that may help is to use spot metering and meter on the moon itself... Give it a go with spot I think that'll help...

Cant you read my exif data Muddy?

Yeah spot metering is the go for moon shots. I just need to crank up my shutter speeds and crank down my Fstop. Silly me, i must have been using such a high Fstop because i wanted to make sure i had enough DOF to get the whole moon in focus! (Im kidding)

not from a 70-300g, but from the sigma 70-300

just adding in that even a "mediocore" lens can produce decent results if you stabilize it well, and get the exposure right.

1/200
F8
Bogen 3046 tripod




-Rich