I shot a bunch before the clouds rolled in, at different ISO settings (100,200,400) full manual mode, L size DR 100, since I was trying to see what the most number of pixels I could get on the moon. Main issue seems to be that the HS20+58A combo is very hard to handhold, it weighs about 3 pounds altogether. These are the best of the lot at each ISO that I got.
The moon diameter with this combo and these settings was around 1,360-1,365 pixels.
This may sound harsh, Alex, but try to understand where I'm coming from. You're obsessing too much on measurements based on pixels. Wildlife photographers often describe their choice of gear as what "puts more pixels on the subject" but that's shorthand for saying "maximizing the subject in the frame", which ultimately increases the number of pixels used for the subject. You'd be better off (as I've already told you) to simply use a TC that provides the largest image size (and none of them entirely fill the frame with the moon) without ruining image quality.
.
The diameter of the moon was approximately 1,360 pixels, using the standard diagonal to determine field of view (5760 pixels), that gives us a field of view of 2.25 degrees or about the same as using a 32mm EP on a 700mm telescope
http://dvaa.org/Epp.html
input 700mm for focal length and 60mm for aperture, and scroll down to Orion Sirius 32mm EP
On a telescope this gives us a magnification of (700/32) or 21.875x (50mm=1x) or approximately 1,094mm (close enough to 1,000mm!)
Using the image height for field of view (3456 pixels), we get 1.35 degrees or about the same as using a 40mm EP on a 1250mm telescope
input 1250mm focal length and 90mm aperture into the above link and scroll down to Orion Sirius 40mm EP.
On a telescope this gives us a magnification of (1250/40) or 31.25x or approximately 1,563mm.
All this assumes a lunar diameter of 0.53 degrees, it can vary from 0.49-0.57 degrees, depending on the moon's distance from the Earth.
Try to remember that this is a camera forum, not a telescope forum. While you may understand all of what you've written, for most people in this forum it comes across as gibberish. Possibly impressive sounding but gibberish nonetheless.
The whole point of getting to use as many of the sensor's 'pixels' is to maximize resolution, yet your photos invariably have next to the lowest, most dismal resolution I can recall seeing in this forum. I won't mention the name of the worst since he tremendously overreacts to criticism, even positive criticism. If resolution means anything to you, Fuji's HS## cameras are the worst possible choice. They're great for DR, but for resolution they're bottom dwellers. If you like the mechanical zoom and the way they feel in your hand that's one thing, but for your purposes the HS20 needs to be replaced, stat!
You also wrote "Even at f/5.6 I needed 1/80 sec shutter speed and the moon still came out dark."
Well yeah, I'd say so. According to the "Looney 11 rule" that I know you've heard of before, several times in fact since I have a tendency to repeat myself, says that for a good moon exposure you'd use f/11 with a shutter speed equal to the reciprocal of the ISO. So for ISO 100, you'd use f/11 @ 1/100th sec. You used 1/80th sec. at ISO 100 which is close enough to 1/100th, but your f/5.6 should have produced a moon that was two stops brighter than most people would have wanted, but your photos were 2 to 3 stops darker, so your photos are off by 4 or 5 stops which is a HUGE amount. It's enough to make one stop and wonder what's going on?
Here are two crops of your moon moon photo, excluding most of the dark sky that allows the histogram to only show the moon's distribution of tones. The second looks closer to see if any detail can be found. I can't. Either you should have used a tripod, waited for another day when the approaching storm might not have helped to ruin the photos, or ... replace your HS20 with one that doesn't always seem to produce photos that look like they were shot through dirty windows or that has a lot of internal haze-producing fungus. I can't speak for everyone else, but I don't want to spend a lot of time examining photos in detail only to later hear "Oh, the window I shot them through was dirty."
.
The combo I used weighs a ton and I'm hoping I dont damage the lens assembly....... when I point it up the lens collapses towards the camera and when I point it down it goes all the way in the other direction haha.
How come they didn't build a zoom lock into these cameras?
Because Fuji never made any TCs that weighed more than 1/4 of what Canon's and Nikon's huge TCs weighed. But the Fuji cameras that did have TCs designed for them mounted the tele lens adapters using rigid tubes that were firmly attached to the camera bodies, not hung off the end of a delicate lens assembly. Nikon and some other companies added a lock to some of their lenses, but they were designed for only for the lens with at most a light plastic lens hood attached to the end, not for a lens that's trying to support a pound or two of additional glass.
