f/8 1/3 sec ISO-800 390mm with Canon 5D Mark IV
What setting for a sharper image?
Impressions of image as it is?
I think your question, Larry, suggests you already recognize the problem. For an image like this I would either want to go tack sharp or impressionistically blurred. This one feels neither fish nor fowl, which gives it the feel of a mistake. Your exif data looks fine to me. Given your camera, you could push the ISO a little more and might want to go to f11 with such a long lens but since I don’t actually shoot that long very often, I’m probably not the best person to ask anyway. But, in any case, it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the depth of field since nothing is in focus. Still, I don’t understand why it’s blurred. I assume you are using a tripod. Was it a windy night? 390 mm is pretty long and the camera not being dead still, could certainly account for the blur. If it isn’t camera shake then it would have to be focusing. Are you struggling to focus at night? You should be able to take your focus (which I would do manually) off a bright object like the moon or the CN Tower. By the way, I’m from Toronto as well.
I won’t respond to your queries, Larry - Kerry has done that far better than I could ! What I will say is that is one very impressive shot of the moon.
You’ve noted the issue with the image. There’s nothing sharp in the image and it looks like camera movement. Not surprising at 1/3 with a 390mm focal length. Don’t know the lens you were using but no reason so shoot at f/8 at the distance you were at. You would have had plenty of depth at f/5.6, so there’s one stop faster shutter speed. Then I would have moved the ISO up to at least 6400 which buys you 3 more stops of shutter speed. Combined with the aperture change, instead of 1/3 you’re now at about 1/50. Still really slow for a longer lens but on a tripod and a lot of care for this scene should be enough. This is the classic example of not pushing ISO to hope for less noise, which can easily be dealt with versus too slow a shutter speed which results in an image that you can’t do anything about.