In reply to richard_hopkins:
> Those pictures look good. What do you want to improve?
I don't know. I've never done this before I don't know what pitfalls I could have made or how I could improve if I had another go at the project.
> How does a single frame look compared with the total stack? Is there a significant difference or is the stack just overall a bit sharper?
I took both RAW images and a single movie file with my mirrorless camera. I have to admit that the individual images of the movie ripped with software, and the RAW images that I took with the camera of the moon are, in my eyes, inferior to the finished composition by using software to stack 1,000 images. I had 10,000 to play with but only used 1,000 and then used 200 of the best images.
> What focal length & shutter speed did you use and did you track the moon's movement? For something bright like the moon you can use a fast shutter and high iso to minimise blurring due to movement (both tracking of the moon and the atmosphere) then the stacking process will then reduce the noise. However if you are taking videos, you might not have this flexibility on the camera.
As for focal length the movie and RAW images were shot at 400mm. With a full frame dSLR camera this equates to 800mm and even then the moon did not fill the frame. I have a small dobson telescope and maybe one day I will try and glue my camera to that. However I think this would be a bad idea seeing as the telescope mount is exceptionally basic and probably would not take the weight of the camera attached to it. But never say no.
When filming, I had a shutter speed of 50 frames per second. I make sure that everything is filmed at 50 frames per second so that I can get stuff to play nicely when video editing with the UK PAL setup. I'll be honest and say I don't have a scooby if this is the best practice especially as I publish everything for the internet rather than for viewing on the telly.
After my first attempt I asked for advice on here and my astro forums. Both sites mentioned that unless I had a mechanical way of tracking a subject then manually moving the camera would change perspective and add difficulties the editing phases. With all this in mind I chose to set my camera onto a tripod and keep it stationary. This allowed me 6 minutes for the moon to zoom across the viewfinder.
With the night shots in RAW the meta data was as follows:
ISO 200 (Lowest ISO the camera had)
F9 (Close to the sweet spot of f8)
100th second
I have to admit that the astro editing software did not like RAW files and had a hissy fit, crashing the computer. Probably as each RAW file was over 16Mb and there was a shed load to use. In the end I went for BMP files as the software played nicely with this format. TIFF was as unstable as RAW and I did not want to stack JPEGS as I was beginning from a lossy foundation and I'd rather start from as best a image format as possible. RAW was out so BPM was next best.
One thing that blew my little mind was how much the moon actually rotated during my little project. Yes I know the moon rotates but until I gave this project a go I did not actually witness it. During the day I shot the moon against a blue sky and a few hours later I shot it against a night sky. Even with a few hours difference I could visibly see a difference in the moon's rotation. Yay for science.
You also asked about over enthusiastic sharpening in the process. I will admit that when I used registax for a previous attempt there was an obvious white line which ruined my experience of viewing the image. I did not include that link as I was aware of this issue and saw no reason to add a link.
A kind individual on my astro forum explained how to reduce/remove the white line during processing/sharpening, and as far as I can tell I can not detect any sharp white lines to spoil the image that I gave a link to.
However I am open to comments and advice on improving my image further and would welcome comments on where sharp white lines can be viewed so that I can attempt to remove them.
I'll admit that the Blue Moon has some sharpening issues however I now know how to work on them.
I genuinely want to improve and get the best shot I can.
Cheers
Post edited at 18:09