Moon (July and August)

[Oliver Gigacz]

Just some shots of the moon during August and July with a Canon 450D.

[Quark]

Hi Oliver,

I am assuming you used the 450D on a tripod with a lens.
Try not to over expose the image and take multiple exposures, say about 100, then load them into Registax and stack them. This will produce a higher res image than you will ever get from a single exposure.

Regards
Trevor

[deadsimple]

Not bad at all! What camera settings were used?



Yeah there's a fair bit of overexposure. On the 450D I usually stick strictly to ISO200, and 1/800 - 1/2000 sec exposure, around f/5-6 at 250mm at a mostly full moon. Any slower and you start losing detail.

To be honest I've found the best results with a moon-stack of about 3-8 or so (compared to 100+ on regular planetary shots). That'll get rid of enough noise to allow you to deconv/wavelet-process without bringing out noise, and also allow you to output a decent image at the original resolution/DPI/PPI (i.e. 1:1 pixel) without having to downsize.

Any more than 10 in a stack and I find the moon gets too blurry.

[Oliver Gigacz]

I am using a Mac so is there program which does it for that. And should I take the image RAW?

[renormalised]

Yes there is....Keith's Image Stacker (http://keithwiley.com/software/keithsImageStacker.shtml)

[Oliver Gigacz]

I used auto exposure on all. Focal of 300MM and a shutter speed of around 1/800 ISOAUTO. What should the settings be to get a better image?

[deadsimple]

Ah that explains it! Go Manual for sure. Might take a couple of shots to get the settings/exposure right, depending on the phase (i.e. brightness) of the moon and your aperture.

At f/5.6 which your lens is supposed to achieve at 300mm .. I'd go somewhere between 1/400-1/1600 sec exposure (usually not slower than 1/800 if I can help it). Also ISO200 (or 400 if it's a darker half-moon) to reduce grain. Whichever combination of settings can get you the lower ISO value without having too slow of a shutter.

In terms of focusing, I've experimented with the standard auto-focus and live-view autofocus on that camera. I tend to use the standard one as it's fairly quick and accurate.