My effort at the Lunar Eclipse last night.
A sample of approx 25 (progressive) shots.
My first effort at this exercise so overall was rather satisfied.
Imagine some of you 'experts' out there will have achieved better results

[Arpe]

Too cloudy here - that 2nd shot looks quite "smudged"?

[Bramela]

Yes Arpe, it does look smudged. There was a bit of cloud coming and going. I had a lot of trouble getting a good focus. However, Itried and learnt a bit.
Have a look at Mr Hyde's shot what a difference the longer lens makes.
Maybe better next time, whenever that may be, I believe about 2011.
Cheers

[ChrisA]

Have a look at Mr Hyde's shot what a difference the longer lens makes.

Of course, the longer lens does make a difference. But not as much as you'd think.

I took this using a K10D and a 400mm lens:



It's not as good as Mr Hyde's, but it's acceptable, and this is about 2/3 the size of the original 100% crop. At the 300mm you used, the image size will be smaller than possible with a 400mm lens, but reasonable sharpness is still perfectly possible.

From the 0.7s exposure you gave the first shot, even without any other issues, movement blur would be significant at the enlargement you've chosen.

The other thing is the aperture you chose was F32. At such tiny apertures, lenses are less sharp than they are wider open, since diffraction blurring is starting to become significant.

So, bottom line, for moon shots:

- short exposures (1/100 s or less)
- wider apertures (F16 or more - depth of field is not a worry here!)
- better to underexpose a bit rather than overexpose, so as not to burn out the detail.
- use a tripod, and the timer with the 2s delay so that the mirror is already up when the shutter opens, to prevent vibration
- for focusing, use the green hexagon in the viewfinder for focus confirmation. The red dot does not tell you it's in focus, only which AF segments it's using.

Try again - I bet you'll be surprised how much better you can achieve.

[Spot Focus]

Heres my attempt at the Luna Eclipise Over NSW Australia taken with a K10 + sigma 50-500 uncropped

[Mechan1k]

I also found looking at other people's attempts that you can't really have a slow shutter speed ... due to the fact of the movement of the moon was enough to blur the image ... even with 2 sec mirror lock-up and tripod.

[Spot Focus]

I also found looking at other people's attempts that you can't really have a slow shutter speed ... due to the fact of the movement of the moon was enough to blur the image ... even with 2 sec mirror lock-up and tripod.

the posted shot was taken with mirror lock-up and 3sec exp iso 400 and shows blur from the moon moving I have another at iso 1600 1sec that is much better

[Mechan1k]

I noticed the same from an automotive forum I am on here too ... we have a photography sub-forum on it ... and a lot of people were finding the same issues.

I didn't give it a go though ... I only have my 18-55mm lens ... i am still waiting on my longer zoom to come in on back-order.