Okay here it is, my first 400mm F5.6 shot. Don't use it to judge the lens. It's an off beat test. This is a 100% crop of a shot of the moon, meaning you are looking at it pixel per pixel, no resizing involved. I'm pleased with the result, but.. once again, this isn't what the lens was meant for. A rabbit finally showed itself today, but they're just so darned timid. I approached it from around the corner of the house, but the act of lying down to brace the lens (it was getting dark, even at ISO 3200 I was getting awfully low shutter speeds) scared it away. Anyway, this was shot at F5.6, wide open, tripod mounted at 1/25th of a second. ISO 200. I want to say that this was not an ideal astrophotography setup. The moon was low in the sky, that means I was shooting through a lot more air than if it had been overhead. More air means more distortion. It was after sunset, but there may have still been thermal turbulence from heat rising off the Earth as the air temperature dropped. On top of that the "seeing" quality, a measure of the clarity of the air due to turbulence and thermal differences, was poor. It'll effect astronomers with larger telescopes using higher magnifications more, but it still doesn't do me any favors. So basically I'm happy that I got this. Perhaps I could do better in ideal conditions, but I can't imagine there's that much room for improvement. In the mean time I shall continue seeking out appropriate subjects. I have a flooded lake that reportedly has a large variety of shorebirds in it to check out. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
