I think a nice shot. Your problem may not be focus as such.
Take a look at the moon again, and you will probably see that it seems to swim in and out of focus. Sometimes, I get a really strange feeling when I watch this effect.
I believe that is why 'lucky' imaging, using video is often used for the moon and planets.
There is software, that I think pulls out the good stills from the video and stacks them.
I haven't had much luck with it, but, mostly I think because I am yet to spend the time getting it right.
Nothing wrong with your focussing, stack more images to get better definition, 50 or 100 maybe. AS!2 will refine the details as you give it more information. Don't go by the 'fuzziness' of many frames, it's atmospheric distortion
Good image for just two frames but needs more ..
Thanks Brent,
I appreciate what you say so I stacked 5 10 20 and 50 frames.
The best result was from 5 frames. I think that this is due to the very poor seeing on new year's eve. This pic is of the 5 frame stack.
Firstly, what software are you using for stacking?, and are you following the
normal procedure of selecting a reference frame, using wavelets etc etc ?
raymo
Thank you Raymo,
As an absolute beginner at any sort of photography all tips and pointers are welcome.
The capture was of a video clip that was "processed" in Autostakkert 2, so that did the stacking.
I had tried sharpening in Registax but with no visible improvement. So I stacked them again with larger local ap's, a larger reference area and sharpening selected.
The result as attached is certainly better.
I have read several tutorials by Emil Kraaikamp but nowhere can I see how to select a reference frame from the 5000 entered.
I passed the last image to Registax 6 and applied wavelets. The result was darker so it has been lightened with Raw Therapee.
The contrast is greater but I am not sure if any more detail is discernible.
I don't know anything about Autostakkert, but in Registax you look through
as many frames as you can be bothered to, and select the sharpest one
as a reference frame for Registax to work with. Its been a while since I did
it, but from memory its pretty straightforward.
raymo
So trying Raymo's suggestion I thought to give Regitax the same avi file used by Autostakkert. Some web browsing revealed that the latest update to Registax 6 is required to process avi files. So I updated Registax.
I set the avi file as the input to Registax, the program promptly made a mess of the left hand panel and I had to invoke the task manager to stop it.
Then I tried to process a jpg file. same mess, same exit. I knew that it handled png files so I had Gimp export the jpeg as a colour png. Registax now processed. But, it took some time to digest the input and during that time the left hand panel was in that horrible state. So, perhaps Registax just needs more time to attack the avi. I am not hopeful as last time I killed the application the task manager showed no CPU activity. I am going out for the evening so I will start it and see what happens.
With registax i do two runs, first you go through to the stacked result, dont touch wavelets yet, at this point a bar option is avail to realign using the result wich takes you back to the start and you do it all again, the second pas really refines the alignment dramatically allowing more processing.
From my experience its your source thats the problem here. Crater edges are way over exposed and you've lost detail in those areas as its been clipped out and lost. I find underexposing works best for capture as the stacking and wavelets processing "brightens" up the image anyway before you even look at doing it cosmetically. reducing the exposure time also means faster captures so more frames per second and so more data for the software to work with and more chances of getting clear crisp frames in the data set.
try running your source capture (avi or files) through PIPP and output bmp files sorted by quality. I find this often find me good frames to register against. you could also use your stacked (unprocessed) image as a registration frame to re-run the set against too as it will be noise free. you can also give pipp the avi and get it to ouput an avi. this output one should work fine in registax, its how i get my troublesome captures into registax. It wont effect the data, the problems are due to incorrectly formatted avi files causing them to maybe or maybe not load into other programs/viewers. saving to avi with pipp i find cleanly loads into anything i've tried to process with just fine.
your sharpening is pretty aggressive adding more characteristic white edges where there shouldn't be any. so be subtle when processing if you can.
a cheat because the image is "soft" due to focus and maybe atmosphere, reduce the size of your result by half and that can be your final image. try avoiding "nearest neighbour" option if its in your software when resizing, use bicubic or whatever is the slowest option/highest quality resize option your image processor uses. dont forget you can do some things in different software programs, you dont have to do it all in one, just ause tiff or bmp file formats in between programs, never jpg as that introduces bad artifacts. jpg is only for making a copy of the final image to email or put online, not for working with or storing final images as.
