Lunar imaging; video or stills

[jambouk]

Does anyone know if a comparison has been undertaken to compare the final stacked results of the two imaging methods:

- a short run of video using a DSLR at prime focus (say 30-60 seconds), vs

- a number of stills taken of the Moon using the same DSLR at prime focus

 

Is there a significant benefit in detail from say 20 uncompressed raw single exposures compared to the compressed video at 24 fps (500-1500 frames) capturing the few moments of good seeing?

 

James

 

[xtreemchaos]

with my shots I get better results with my 1200d doing stills on full discs, I use a ccd for close ups vids. clear skys, charl.

[johnfosteruk]

I have with my camera James, last night in fact.

With the caveat that the images are blinking awful due to bad seeing you can see the difference in the final image scale. This is because with the D3200 video is captured at 1920x1080px whereas stills are captured at 6000x4000px, and it's RAW - Much more detail captured. It is a little bit of wasted resolution though on my main lunar scope (4" frac), I think my Dawes limit is 1.14 arcseconds and the rig gives me 0.8 per pixel. With the 5" Newt the dawes limit is down to 0.89 which is much better suited but I prefer the frac and I just reduce the final image a little - I still end up with a better image than the stills.

If you really want to pull out some details you need to stack at least 100 frames of stills though, depending on your mount and whether or not you have mirror lock up mode on your DSLR (I don't) you're going to want to take a few seconds between frames. It's worth the time and effort though.

[jambouk]

That's useful, thanks both.

I was wondering if video maybe gave an advantage when the seeing was "normal" or worse.

I will have to do some of my own comparisons.

I guess with an intervalometer, or using the DSLR with a USB lead and a laptop with BYEOS or APT or the bog standard utilities software most are provided with I could set it up to just take 100 stills one after another.

Thanks.

James

 

[Alien 13]

I use stills for Luna, I shoot maybe 6 or 10 and perhaps stack the best 4 in Photoshop, the video option crops or gets too close to the edges of the full disk with my Mak.

Alan 

[Sierra Golf Mike]

I have only been imaging with my Canon 600D for a month and my stacked stills have to date proven to be better to date!