Houghy
Don't worry about only achieving blobs... I was the blob master for many years when starting out with film photography in particular and still get shockers today. The most important thing is the act of getting out there and having a go. There are many factors involved, the most basic of which are good clean optics, suitable focal length to capture the maximum detail your telescope and camera can achieve, good exposure settings, image processing awareness but most of all, excellent seeing (in the hands of the gods unfortunately) that allows you to capture lots of sharp moments (the more the better).
As far as the planets are concerned my mantra has never been to obtain the best pictures (although this is of cousrse a huge bonus if the gods allow..) but most importantly capturing what's going on with the planet. In the case of Jupiter and Mars for example there are a lot of fascinating meteorological changes that can be observed with the simplest camera so long as you are prepared to get out under the stars at every opportunity and spend the time working with the images to obtain the best results. Those blobs (so long as they're not completely awful) often contain a lot of information but you need to spend the time learning how to extract it.
Thanks to the new age of digital imaging, many of the most basic pictures I've seen (so far at least) here on this forum far exceed what the worlds best amateurs were achieving with film photography some years ago.
But...sometimes I feel we get too caught up in producing wonderful images rather than appreciating the what it is we're seeing and why it's happening.
Keep at it. Every image/photo is a unique record of a moment in time.
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