My First Lunar Image, 4th September

[JamesF]

I'm not happy with the processing on this one. I found it quite difficult to work on. Perhaps mostly because I'm working on a laptop (it's the only system I have that runs windows) and the screen isn't big enough to be able to see the entire image at once unless at a very small scale.

Anyhow, the details are: 90 frames of 1/1000th sec. @ ISO400 using my 450D and Mak 127, stacked in Registax and with a slight tweak to levels in Photoshop.

I might see if I can stick a monitor on the laptop and have another go at processing. I also have a second image with different exposure times to process.

Larger image (1024x1024) here. It seems to be very slow to download for me at the moment. I'll look into why later.

James

[Si W]

I think it great, laptops screen's can be quite deceiving sometimes, I think you've done a great job on it James.

[Ganymede12]

Better than my attempts!

[Ganymede12]

When I tried to image the moon about a week ago I found that the centre was so bright that no detail was visible (I was using a moon filter and a JVC Everio AVCHD Camcorder on a Mercury 707 supported by a PH047 ultra afocal digital camera support)

How did you avoid a really bright centre?

[Steve Ward]

Beautiful.

[bazlan]

Very nice

[Rig3l]

stunning! I love it

[JamesF]

When I tried to image the moon about a week ago I found that the centre was so bright that no detail was visible (I was using a moon filter and a JVC Everio AVCHD Camcorder on a Mercury 707 supported by a PH047 ultra afocal digital camera support)

How did you avoid a really bright centre?

I can't honestly say that I know

I think perhaps keeping the exposure time fairly quick and ISO setting low helps. As long as you have a long enough exposure to get plenty of detail it doesn't matter if the image is a bit dim as you can always stretch the histogram in processing.

I'm not sure about DSOs, but I think with imaging solar system objects one of the lessons you have to learn is that it really doesn't need to be as bright as you think it does. You're not actually capturing the image to look at, you're capturing it to process. Capturing an image that you can "exhibit" unprocessed is astonishingly hard and I admire the skill of anyone who can make a good fist of it. Processing an image might sound hideously artificial, but in fact you're not (usually) creating information that isn't there. You're just making it visible to the viewer by a different method.

James