Quote:
Originally Posted by TimT
I think Im getting closer, air was a bit cleaner tonight..
iso 800, F8.0,1/90, 300mm
last night pics were freehand. I used the tripod and timer tonight.. 
thanks for putting up with my learning curve...
I'm heading up to Lime Rock tomorrow and expect the atmosphere will be much cleaner than near NYC. Will try some shots from up there.
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Hand held, the rule of thumb is make the shutter speed at least the inverse of the focal length = 1/300th second. Doesn't hurt to factor in the crop factor your Pentax has of around 1.5x = 1/450th second. Generally, lenses are their sharpest and with best contrast around f/8-11, so that's a good aperture range to shoot for. I'd say 1/90th second is too slow, even with a tripod. But that pic looks about a stop or so (maybe more) over exposed, so you could have shot it around 1/180th or so. Try "chimping" (looking at the LCD after you shoot) and see if the exposure looks good and go from there. Try bracketing your shots, too. For example, shoot one at f/8 @ 1/500th, another at f/5.6 at 1/1000th, and one at f/11 at 1/250th, etc. And a few at each setting, as sharpness can vary. Here's a useful scale for apertures to f/stops. One stop = half or twice as much light = half or double the shutter speed or ISO:
http://www.cinemagraphica.com/tech/stop_scale.html
If your camera will allow you to lock up the mirror before you start the timer, that helps, too. Eliminates the mirror shock from vibrating the camera body. If you can shoot the images in RAW + JPEG, you'll have more to work with in a RAW file. But don't worry about it if you're not used to processing RAW images. Also, save sharpening as the last step, after you've re-sized the image.