Moon 12/6

[vignesh1230]

Hi guys. Im new here and kind of new to this astronomy thing. This is my first stacked image of the moon, without a telescope and with only a Nikon D3000 and a MF 75-200mm Lens. Also no fancy equipment was used, only a tripod (not even a timer). Any tips would be most welcome.

[mswhin63]

Welcome Vgnesh,

For a standard camera shot you are doing better than me. I can't shoot the moon without a scope :)

[von Tom]

That's a very well done image Vignesh. The exposure and contrast is very good, at there looks to be plenty of more detail accessible with some sharpening of the image.

Cheers,

Tom

[renormalised]

Hi Vignesh, welcome to IIS:):)

Nice shot....how many exposures did you stack and what F ratio did you use at what FL??.

You could do with a slightly sharper focus...just looks a little soft to me.

The D3000 is a great little camera. I have one too:)

[vignesh1230]

Thanks. I used 20 exposures and I think the F ratio was like F9 because i didnt know what the best settings were. Then later i found it but the clouds came in. I realised that the focus was a little off. Im going to try again some other time with my telescope and a T adapter for the camera.:)

[renormalised]

Try setting your F ratio to about 4 and open up your lens to 50-80mm, set the ISO to 200-400 and the shutter to 1/125-1/250th sec. Play around with the settings until you find a happy medium and stick with that:)

Grab yourself a remote as well. That'll help with the shakes:)

[anthony.tony]

Use your Camera software to Enhance and Sharpen your image-you should be able to Crop too-

[vignesh1230]

Here it is after some editing... I think i still need to learn the use the software. But it looks better than the first raw image. Same image but edited.

[renormalised]

Looks better, much brighter, but still needs sharper focus.

[von Tom]

Hi Vignesh, I hope you don't mind, I had a go at sharpening your original jpg:

Cheers,


Tom

[vignesh1230]

I dont mind at all. But how did you do the sharpening?

[renormalised]

Using a program like the GIMP or Photoshop...any good image processing software will be able to do the work needed to spruce your images up:)

[anthony.tony]

Try using Mirror lock up-use camera Timer-To stop shakes.

[von Tom]

Hi Vignesh,

I used successive applications of unsharp masking in Photoshop.

Cheers,

Tom

[michaellxv]

Hi Vignesh,
This thread (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=64819) has a lot of tips in it for shots of the moon.