A stranger's tip on moon shots changed my whole setup

I used to stack 200 frames for every lunar photo and still got soft edges, until a guy on a hiking forum said to drop it to 50 and let the seeing conditions pick the best 10%. Tried it during last week's clear night in Phoenix and the detail on the terminator blew me away. Anyone else find that less processing beats more when the atmosphere is steady?

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holly475d ago

Read somewhere a similar thing about planetary imaging, where the trick is picking the exact frames where the atmosphere goes still for a second or two, not just piling everything in. It makes sense for the moon too, since the air is always moving and the surface is so bright. I dropped to like 40 frames once during a foggy night and got a sharper crater rim than when I did 300 on a clear night. The stacking software keeps the sharpest ones anyway, so it's more about quality control than quantity. Good call on testing it against the terminator, that's the real test.