Moon and Sky Photos

I noticed the full moon on a nice clear day a couple of weeks ago. Thought I'd try to photograph it. So I drug out the tripod and the 120-400mm lens and gave it a go.

I used a high ISO, small aperture and fast shutter speed which made the image a little noisy.

I wasn't very pleased when you compare it to some of the other images on the internet.

Click to enlarge.

 I went back out a couple of weeks later after doing  a little research on how other photographers do it. They suggested F11, ISO 100 about 1/80 of a second shutter speed, tripod and manual focus. I had trouble manually focusing because the moon was right overhead and it was hard to get under the camera so I used the regular auto focus.

So anyway, I ended up with this which I think is an improvement.

Last night I tried again (2 days after the one above).
This time I used the same settings more or less (a little faster shutter speed). I used the Live View contrast focusing method which is slower but more accurate.

Better still I think. What do you think?

The moon is about 2160 miles in diameter. That means the bright crater (Copernicus) near the middle of the shadow line is about 58 miles in diameter. Don't look for Apollo stuff left on the moon - it is all much smaller than a pixel.

I re-edited this to make it a little larger. It might have a little more noise but the details are a little easier to see.

Comments?

Click to enlarge.

I went to the Newburgh riverfront one day when it looked like it might be a nice sunset. We've had more spectacular recently but I wasn't there to take a picture. 

Margot likes the sun in this one better but likes the colors in the clouds better in the one below.

Which one do you like better overall?