my attempt at the moon

[daine042 (Daine)]

Hi guys, thought I'd have a bit of a go at the moon last night, I was planning on taking multiple exposures and stacking but so far that isn't working too well so far so I've just had a but of a fiddle in photoshop with exposure and gamma in HDR toning. This was taken with a Nikon D90 mounted to a GSO RC6. exp 1/640 sec ISO 800. Thanks for looking.

[lazjen (Chris)]

Nice single shot. How do plan to go about your stacking? What software are you going to use?

[daine042 (Daine)]

Hi thanks, not too sure on what software to use yet. I'm having laptop memory issues with DSS and registax.

[lazjen (Chris)]

You could try Autostakkert as another alternative.

[Regulus (Trevor)]

That's not too bad a result Daine. Sometimes the clarity is down to atmospherics and there is nothing you can do about that except take lots of shots and pick the best.
Have a look at this for a stacker for basic photography if you are thinking of underexposing a bit on the moon and stacking.
http://www.picolay.de/

Trev

[daine042 (Daine)]

Thanks Trevor. I did lose a bit of detail after converting from NEF to jpeg the original looks a lot sharper

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

That's a nice shot Daine. I have some suggestions to take better without stacking. Wind the ISO down as low as you can get it. ISO100 or lower if you can and adjust the shutter speed to compensate. High ISO just introduces noise.

As Trevor suggested, take heaps of shots and pick the sharpest. Good luck!

[Flugel88 (Michael)]

Not to bad Daine i would be happy with that.

[Robert9 (Robert)]

Hi Daine. That's a nice shot with your D90. They're a great camera .
I agree with Kevin regarding noise. With a bright subject like the moon you can go for a lower ISO to reduce any camera noise, the slower shutter speed required is not going to cause problems. Bracket your exposures which will give you a choice. If you do want to use high ISO, the D90 has built in noise reduction (NR) which takes a separate black frame and subtracts it, all within the camera. You see only the final picture.
Stacking of your images will give you the ability to improve the overall definition of the image. Autostakkert works pretty well and is a freebee, but if you already have Photoshop, (I have CS3) it can do the job too; just select your best images and load each frame onto a separate layer, then do an auto-align layers. Afterwards you can have a look at your levels and adjust for best effect and detail.
Its a long steep learning curve which we are all on. I get the feeling that the top is almost asymptotic.
Robert