Moon imaging, Single shot or stacked video?

[StargeezerTim]

Hi folks.

I have taken some shots of the moon over the past two nights, mainly to learn how to use a new scope (TS 80mm F6).

The first night I took some single shots which blew me away with their clarity. I also took a video on the first night with my 100D but it looked awful,lacked detail.

Last night I used my old 550D on movie crop mode and stacked 2000 frames (PIPP, then AutoStakkert, then photoshop then wavelets in Registax). The quality was much better than the first night but still not as good a the single frame image. Here is the stacked video image from last night.

 

Here is the same sort of crop from a single image from the first night.

One difference is that I used a barlow for the video stack, so perhaps the comparison is not ideal.

My question is, should I expect greater detail and resolution through a stacked Video as opposed to a single shot with the DSLR? If so, any suggestions how I can improve my videos? Cheers, Tim 

[xtreemchaos]

if you have good seeing a single shot will do,but for most nights when the seeing is less than good, staxing should work well. clear skys and good seeing,  charl.

[happy-kat]

Also the nights were different could have been the atmosphere. The other week I looked at the Moon and it didn't stop swimming couldn't get a clear image once with my 1100d.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Stacking a series of stills works best on a DSLR for me. Video mode tends to have much lower resolution

[StargeezerTim]

28 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Stacking a series of stills works best on a DSLR for me. Video mode tends to have much lower resolution

Cheers... Do you need flats and bias as in DSO imaging or just the image stills?

Also, What software do you use to stack?

[Alien 13]

If its a full disc lunar then single shot for me every time too many edge artifacts for me when stacking.

Alan

[The Admiral]

48 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Stacking a series of stills works best on a DSLR for me. Video mode tends to have much lower resolution

Haven't tried video, but I use the half-way house of setting the camera to continuous mode and pressing the remote release until the buffer is full and the the camera slows down. I allow the buffer to clear and repeat the exercise as many times as I want. I'm saving as RAW, and end up with, say, 70 frames, and after converting to TIFF, I stack in AS!2

I don't use flats or bias frames.

Ian

[StargeezerTim]

OK... eventually worked out how to loas tif files into AS!2 and stacked five frames.

Looks pretty good i think. Better than the video...

[laudropb]

The last image is definitely the best in my opinion. I think the answer is you just have to keep experimenting until you find the method that suits you best.

[ArmyAirForce]

It also depends how much you want to punish your camera. My old Nikon D50 died, admittedly after 9 years and over 250,000 shutter releases, but shooting 200 to 300 solar or lunar shots in continuous mode can't have helped. I generally now use the highest resolution of video mode if using the DSLR, or do a mosaic with the ASI120 camera if I want higher detail.

[Alien 13]

5 hours ago, ArmyAirForce said:

It also depends how much you want to punish your camera. My old Nikon D50 died, admittedly after 9 years and over 250,000 shutter releases, but shooting 200 to 300 solar or lunar shots in continuous mode can't have helped. I generally now use the highest resolution of video mode if using the DSLR, or do a mosaic with the ASI120 camera if I want higher detail.

I did worry about this, video with my Mak crops the image so I cant get the full disc I now shoot maybe a max of 10 raw's and either use a single "best" frame or manually stack the best 4 in Photoshop.

Alan

[The Admiral]

6 hours ago, ArmyAirForce said:

It also depends how much you want to punish your camera. My old Nikon D50 died, admittedly after 9 years and over 250,000 shutter releases, but shooting 200 to 300 solar or lunar shots in continuous mode can't have helped. I generally now use the highest resolution of video mode if using the DSLR, or do a mosaic with the ASI120 camera if I want higher detail.

I have an electronic shutter option with my mirrorless camera, so at least it is spared the mechanical wear and will also help minimise shutter induced movement.

Ian