Tutorials?

[Digger1895]

I've only ever taken a few shots through the eyepiece with my phone so am totally new to this and want to tinker with some lunar/planetary webcam photography.

Am I right in thinking I could capture an avi file with Sharpcap, stack it in DeepSkyStacker and touch up with GIMP?

Are these all the steps needed to begin?

Can anyone point me to some tutorials for each of these?

Cheers!

[Digger1895]

PS. I don't want you to go trawling through pages of post like I just have for Sharpcap, just if you know where any of these are,

Thanks again.

[Bizibilder]

To stack a "movie" (an .avi file) you need Registax or Autostakkert2.  Deep sky stacker is for stacking multiple frames from a "still" camera (either a DSLR or an Astro-camera).  Sharpcap will capture your "movie" from your webcam type camera or "proper" astro movie camera.  GIMP is a good (and free!) piece of software for final processing.  If you look in the tutorials section of the forum (Getting started - General help and advice - Primers and tutorials) you should find what you are looking for.  Or you could ask a specific question in the Help and advice section.  Hope this helps to get you started.

[Robp]

My process for planetary imaging is usually the following:

Capture AVI using sharpcap

Center image using PIPP

Stack image using Autostakkert2

Wavelet processing in Registax

Final processing in Photoshop (or Gimp if you don't have that).

Sharpcap, PIPP, Autostakkert2 and Registax are all freeware.

Regarding tutorials of the processes used for each piece of software, most of them will vary depending on your target.

I have a couple of saved pages from these forums and written by JamesF that may be of some help:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/184821-beginners-guide-to-stacking-planetary-images-with-autostakkert2/

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/76963-embarrassing-jupiters-webcam-clinic/

My advice would be to focus on the capturing of the data first as good processing comes with lots of practice and is reliant on the quality of the data captured

Good luck

[Digger1895]

Cheers Rob, just the sort of thing I was looking for.