Originally posted by DanielT74 And finding that 1.7x teleconverter doesn't really give any more detail. Maybe a touch more but also more noise..
Was I naive to expect it to work well with this lens??
I'm finding that it works pretty well with the tamron 90mm macro..
Hoping that some of the "oldies" can set me straight here.. (first one is without 1.7x and the second one with )
Cheers!!
daniel
PS I did a quick edit in iPhoto (sorry - don't have Photoshop or Lightroom on this laptop) to get the most out of images. The one with teleconverter was very soft, hence more noise when I tried to sharpen a little.
Daniel, such a slow zoom lens is the wrong companion for a tc. Tele converters work best with prime lenses and with longer focal lengthes. Zooms need a dedicated tc (like the Sigma Apo-tcs for the Sigma Apo 70-200/2.8) and some might work by pure luck with a particulyr zoom lens.
Also, the zoom you used, though being a good lens on its own, is simply way too slow for a 1.7x tc. To achieve max. quality, you must step down two f-stops and arrive at a aperture of app. 19(!) for best sharpness and contrast. This on the other hand gives you a very slow shutter speed, which leads to blurr (motion blurr of the moon, atmospheric blurr - called "seeing" and ofcourse blurr by camera shake due to wind etc.)
Add to that the moon phase. Shooting the Full Moon is possible. Your goal would be to work out the ray craters (Tycho being most prominent), because these bright rays can be seen best at Full Moon.
For anything else, particuzlarily good high res shots of the craters, you should go for a different phase of the Moon, may be first or second half. The reason is simple. At Full Moon the sun rays fall perpendicularily to your line of sight onto the Moon's surface. This gives a frontal and flat light.
At any other phase the sun rays fall onto the Moon's surface at varying oblique angles. And quite the same as shots here on Earth: side light gives a better modulation of structures, because it produces shadows, which frontal light does not. Shadows make not only all the details visible, they increase contrast, which is key for sharpness. So Moon shots outside the Full Moon days are sharper, have better contrast and show more detail. But you won't see the rays of Tycho as good as durong Full Moon...
Ben