Lunar Photography 11th dec

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

So i dragged out the trusty none modded canon 350D (dinocam i named her)

pulled out the cheap canon 90-300mm  f4.5-5.6 ES lens and removed the nifty fifty.

fitted the camera and lens to the very cheap Camlink TP2500 tripod and plugged in the remote shutter. 

cam settings :

ISO 800

Shutter speed 1/500 second

Aperture F5.6

Partial metering mode

focal length 300mm  - true focal length = 480mm (1.6x crop factor from sensor)

114 shots taken , 107 used, 7 discarded as over exposed - blurred.

manual tracking of the moon via a nudge of the tripod here and there.

image 1 stacked moon is the output from autostakker2

image two stacked moon 01 is the output from registax

image three is both image 1+2 run through registax again.

feel free the crit my images i would like more defined craters and balance between the seas and impact areas 

[nvchad2]

Very nice images.  I like the size of the moon in a 300mm lens.  But now and then I find myself wishing I had a decent 500mm so I could catch a bit more detail.

Images 1 and 3 seem to have a lot more detail.  Did you mess with the wavelets in Registax at all with the second picture?  Just curious because I haven't really seen a comparison of Autostakker and Registax on the same image.  Be interesting to see what each piece of software was capable of on their own.

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

hello Nvchad2

image one, the AS!2 stack was very unusual. i had never used this programme before.

image one is the output from autostakker2, i threw in the images, told it to crop to 1280-720

from my original 350D raw images. that is the output from stacking 

Image two, was more troublesome. registax 6 just does not like my canon raw files.

and it eats the 4gb ram i have, so the raw images had to be converted to JPG

i did this using canons own Digital Photo Professional software.

these 114 jpgs , were then sorted manually , from the 114 images i kept 107.

registax accepted the JPG files more easy but the downfall was a lot of the data i captured was lost.

95% of the best images were kept in registax, and very light wavelets used.

anything above 1/4 on the sliders gave huge artifacting and very hard noise ( impossible to blend the noise out)

so wavelets had very little adjustments mostly channels 6-5-4-2, 3 and 1 i used to catch most of the noise ( registax 5 trick)

what got me was this.

Autostakkert2 made the stack more defined and gave the look it had already been run in registax or something alike.

taking the AS2 file into registax you are taken straight to stack-wavelets menus. messing with wavelets starts to blow out details to much

you just know when that jarring look appears and the noise that looks like you captured a snowy scene.

registax 6, i do like good old R6 but it is a dog, a right dog, it eats memory ( mind you i run 4gb ram and a quad core system) but

i have the power to crunch through. Tiff 8bit i found was the best files to work with. i would have likes to use Canon raw,

but the small loss of data to tiff is ok. but files are still huge and registax eats the memory. i found JPG only worked with the 4gb ram i had at hand.

STACKING: lol nearly all my images are centred but R6 makes a right hash of stacking, guided its fine i bet  but my images always get stacked 

and end up a mess. the very few that do get stacked end up with violet coma, most get binned. i end up binning entire sessions worth of images.

saying that if you shove an autostakkert file into registax it is great, does what you want in wavelets abide only small tweeks but works.

workflow:

PIPP : 114 raw files -cropped 1280x720 ,  lets as color ( but somehow saved as monochrome) saved as tiff

Autostakkert: surface mode/crop - noise robust 5 gradient- stack option tiff - stack normalize 75% - blend raw in for 55%- HQ refine - drizzle off.

use 50 points and set detect brightness to between 5-15 analyse and stack

registax:  i put all the PIPP cropped and centred TIFF's into canons software and converted to jpg files into R6, hand selected auto points on most defined craters and near visual craters (around 50 points were used )

then a standard stack , with very low wavelet tweek

[nvchad2]

registax:  i put all the PIPP cropped and centred TIFF's into canons software and converted to jpg files into R6, hand selected auto points on most defined craters and near visual craters (around 50 points were used )

then a standard stack , with very low wavelet tweek

Can't PIPP output straight to JPG?  I know Registax wasn't liking the TIF files that PIPP was generating for me, so I was using BMP.

Example:  Enter raw images into PIPP -> process to your liking -> output as a file type that RegiStax will play nicely with.  Then they're all centered and adjusted and in the file type you want.  This would cut out the Canon software and take one less step.  Unless I'm not understanding.  All this stuff is really new to me and I don't have access to the software to check myself right now...but regardless, your method worked fine and you ended up with a solid image.

Also, I definitely agree that Registax is a resource hog.  I can only use it on my Alienware laptop.  The other computers all but shut down when its working.  I am definitely going to try using Autostakker, as I've been hearing a lot of good stuff about it lately.  Registax would be really cool if it worked well with more file types, but I agree with you that losing detail when converting to JPG is really disappointing.

[cgarry]

Can't PIPP output straight to JPG?  I know Registax wasn't liking the TIF files that PIPP was generating for me, so I was using BMP.

I did not add support for PIPP to output in JPG format because I did not want to encourage the bad practice of stacking JPGs!  Though since PIPP has evolved into more of a general tool and I have resigned from my job at the processing police then maybe I should rethink this...

Cheers,

Chris

[nvchad2]

I did not add support for PIPP to output in JPG format because I did not want to encourage the bad practice of stacking JPGs!  Though since PIPP has evolved into more of a general tool and I have resigned from my job at the processing police then maybe I should rethink this...

Cheers,

Chris

I'm new to stacking anything, so I try to learn what I can.  But one of the first things I learned when I started regular photography was that JPG was not a great file type for image quality.  Shooting RAW is what I try to do all the time unless I'm just imaging around the house.  So adding JPG to the output type wouldn't affect me really, though it might be helpful to those who are new to stacking.  

I think if RegiStax 6 would play nicer with file types it wouldn't be an issue.  I've been very happy with my brief time learning PIPP.  Its very simple to use but allows for A LOT of flexibility.

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

I did not add support for PIPP to output in JPG format because I did not want to encourage the bad practice of stacking JPGs!  Though since PIPP has evolved into more of a general tool and I have resigned from my job at the processing police then maybe I should rethink this...

Cheers,

Chris

sometimes only sometimes your going to be forced to use a JPG stack.

never really used any other software like PIPP, but its freaking awesome.

i followed the steps on the site showing roughly how to do stuff. from there its simple.

i would not include JPG , unless there comes a time when its called for.

better to stop bad habits before they manifest, and PIPPS does what it says on the tin.

[tingting44]

the 3rd one does it for me