Night landscape shooting

This past full moon has got me thinking of future full moons. Especially a full moon with a ton of snow around me. I really enjoyed my hike down Flattop under the full moon, it was stunning beauty.

Anyone have any tips for me to attain better sharpness? Here's an example of a shot where foreground sharpness seems ok but after that, things go down hill fast. This was a raw image, and I did add about 1.5 stops of exposure. It is full resolution so you can see how incredibly unsharp it is!

http://c0278592.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/original/593708.JPG

I set my d700 on a flimsy tripod, set focus to infinity, kept my iso at 400 and shot anywhere from f8 to f16, depending on depth of foreground. I didn't have too much wind however I'm feeling that I needed my big tripod.

Cable release?

Higher ISO/faster shutter speed?

Is it just very difficult to get clean lines on distant objects at night?

Need Help!!!

Kane

Setting your focus to infinity probably has a lot to do with the lack of sharpness.
You may have better luck using a hyperfocal chart to achieve better focus from fore to aft.
You can use your camera's self timer in lieu of a cable release, but you definitely should use one or the other, as well as using your camera's mirror lockup feature.
Finally, it may just be me, but most long exposed moonlit shots don't look all that different from daylight images. One way to make them look more 'nighttime' is to expose one image for the foreground, then another for the starry skies. For the latter, use the lowest f stop on your lens, focus to near infinity and expose for 10-30 seconds if you don't want star trails. Then combine them in postprocess and tweak to taste.

Click here, Kane -
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0509/fv0509-1.html

It's a little odd that the foreground is in better focus if you set the focus to infinity. It should be the foreground that is out of focus. Maybe you accidentally moved the focus ring while setting up the shot? Noise would also be a factor in image quality at f8 to f16. In general, you'll want the widest aperture possible at night, such as f2.8. This means not including close foreground objects or doing what John suggested. Also, using auto-focus and focusing on the moon can give you more accurate focus than just setting the focus to the infinity mark on your camera (assuming you have no foreground). It's generally best to use the lowest ISO you can while still filling up a lot of the histogram (sometimes this means bumping up the ISO to around 1600). And 30 seconds is often the right amount of time to expose a shot like this. Longer exposures can start to show star trails and shorter exposures can lead to more noise.

I asked photo shop owner / photographer last week and tried what he suggested. It worked.
Aperture Priority
Iso 100
f 11
ev - 2 full stops
Tripod
it worked pretty good

I'd have to agree with John's comments. I've done hundreds of moon shots when I use to live in Hawaii. Gave environments a different look. I always use the self timer if I forget my remote trigger, also bringing a flashlight to light up something a 1/3 of the way to see if you can focus on that. Same principle as hyerfocal. Depending on what the hyerfocal distance is this may or may not work. Not sure I'd agree with Grant. Your not going to have much noise problems with a D700 especially at cold temps. Also 30 secs and 2.8 your going to have shots that looks like you took it in the middle of the day or even way to washed out. If you were shooting a very dark environment then I'd recommend the 30 sec at 2.8 But Grant does bring up a good point if you don't have anything that needs to be in the foreground try focusing on the moon for a more accurate focus. I've done this several times and it seemed to work.

I always use a cable release, at todays high res it absolutely essential.

If you don't have a cable release, you can also use the self-timer on your camera. Brian, I don't mind things looking too bright in my camera LCD, as long as there is no clipping on the histogram. I can always bring the brightness back down in Lightroom to make it look like a night shot, and that reduces the apparent noise even more. Admittedly, there is less noise with a full moon, so you can get by with smaller apertures if you have foreground. I usually shoot with about 1/4 moon, as you're not able to capture as many stars with the full moon brightening the sky too much.