What lens size for Lunar Photography?

A new Sony 200-600 zoom arrived at my door late yesterday afternoon, so I grabbed my tripod and A7iv, then walked to the headland waiting for the Moon - apparently 94% full.

I used the "Loony Eleven" rule I've been reading about. First, set Aperture to F11, then match the shutter speed to ISO... In my case, SS 125 and ISO 125.

Manual Focus with zoom function works a treat. Unfortunately, it had been quite a hot day, so the heat haze, even over the ocean, was causing difficulty before the sunset behind me, as the earlier shots show.

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It was windy, too, so next time, I would choose SS 400 and ISO 400 for this lens to take some of the movement out of play, despite using the remote control and a sturdy Manfrotto.

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The Sony Imaging App was easy to use for remote on my phone. However, I had to delete all the images from the phone on completion. This is because I was shooting RAW plus jpeg, but the jpeg images automatically imported by the APP into Apple Photos were all 2Mb, which seems pretty stupid to me, as they're all 33Mb RAW and JPG on the camera. Maybe I can tweak that?

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I also shot Full Frame, and Crop Factor sets to compare. The Crop Factor images indicated more noise. Also, the Full Frame shots weren't as sharp. I tweaked both in Post-production, but I probably overcooked them. It would be nice to get some decent colours, sharpness and noiseless images out of the box, but I guess that's expecting too much at my skill level.

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I also snapped a cruise ship on the horizon and Cormorant coming towards me as the sun went down. So excuse these off-topic images, but I'm impressed with the lens, despite struggling to carry it home. Full Moon in a couple of days... So this has been good practice.

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Shooting the moon distractions....

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