DSLR imaging questions

[northcanadian]

Thanks to all of you for your kind welcome to this newbie poster!

I have a Pentax K20DSLR and a Celestron 9.25 SCT

and have been experimenting (big learning curves for this old guy) on moon photography.

Camera can take14.5 megapixel raw images, which I have been converting to tiffs in camera. Images seem ok processed individually via Iris and Photoshop.

I'm wondering if I did a series of shots (lower file sizes?) and stacked them...would that be a better way to go? If so...What are maximum file sizes that

can be used in Iris and Registax 4 programs?

Thanks for any and all suggestions:)

• 
  

[steppenwolf]

Opinions differ on this subject but for my own 2 cents worth, I find that stacking DSLR images of the moon is counter-productive, I tend to get better results by taking several and choosing the best of the lot and working on that. Taking the images with a long series of of webcam images and stacking them on the other hand works very well. I guess it is all down to the number of images you take.

[northcanadian]

Thanks for your input...I will do just that...take many shots and save best of lot.

[JCJC]

I agree with Steve, stacking for me works great with a webcam and definitely improves the final result but with the DSLR I tend to take a few shots, mabey with slightly different exposures and process the best one. Just my preference.

Jordan

[Beyond_Vision]

I have used Registax with Canon 400D DSLR images and it can definately improve the result. The only problem is the file size and number of files taken which can give your PC a bit of a headache. I have been trying to stack images from my 15 megapixel Canon 50D and encountered problems. I tried to stack a small sample of the images I took and although it stacked ok when I came to save it in Registax it came up with a insufficient memory error. My machine is running XP and has 3 gigs of memory.

Regards

Kevin

[Ant]

DSS mucked up the stacking of some M51 RAW's the other day (taken with 300D, so about 7Mb a file).

I wondered if Registax 5 would do them. I only put five of them into Registax and it did do them OK. But it took forever - longer than a 2Gb AVI from the DMK.

I agree with Steve (and others) take a series of shots and choose the best one.

Ant

[Reggie]

Registax and DSS are different beasts, Registax for lunar/planetary and DSS for Star stuff. Unless of course registax 5 has had its routines updated to handle DSO.