[masraum]

Originally Posted by TimT

Dave, here in NY the moon is at 12 o'clock now I took that pic at 10:30 or so and had the camera pointed straight up..

If I'm not describing this correctly.. when I went outside with my camera.. I had to look straight up to see the moon.

I used Sigma 70-300 at 300mm 400ISO f16 125/sec

And my tripod is pos that I usually mount my lap timer on... I know I need something more substantial

My cam doesn't have IS.... its a Pentax istD

funny now that I am looking at the pic again the south pole is in focus..

Tim, change the aperture, something more like f8, you can take a faster exposure or reduce the ISO to 200 which will reduce the noise in the photo. I've got the same lens. The moon is so bright, that the tripod being super sturdy or not shouldn't be a big deal.

If you see a halo around the moon when you look at it with your eye then there's enough humidity to affect the shot.

Also, it looks like the focus is a bit soft which would affect the shot. Keep practicing.