Moon photo with D70

A poster sent me mail asking how I took this shot and made it not
blurry: http://trupin.smugmug.com/gallery/956734

I took the photo at ISO 800, 1/80. I was finding that it took several
seconds for the shutter vibration to die down because the D70 has no
mirror lock-up. (The Meade ETX125 is about 1900mm, f/15.) Instead of
taking longer exposures that showed motion blur, I tried to get one that
would be almost fast enough to minimize vibration. I set the camera to
do continuous shooting, hoping that I could remove any button press
shake with the second or third image. Unlike with long-exposures of
stars, night scenes, etc., I couldn't wait a few seconds for the shake
to stop and then remove a card from the front of the telescope.

At ISO 800, I got quite a bit of noise, so I ran the image through Neat
Image to clean it up. Other people have mentioned stacking 10 or 20 of
the same shot to come up with something crisper.

Or, I could just get a camera with MLU.

 

I don't have the exposure details with me at the moment but this was
probably 1/250 at ISO 400:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3803100&size=lg

My first, considerably blurier, attempt on a shaky Celestron CG-4 mount
and 750mm focal length reflector, f/5. I can't remember if I had mirror
lockup enabled or not. Not much noise, though, I did no noise processing.

Greg

 

Here is one from my Pentax Ds and Sigma 70-300mm lens.

http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=33276#33276

 

Other people have mentioned stacking 10 or 20 of the same shot to come up

Hi, do a search for 'Registax'. It's a freebie bit of astro software that
allows you to stack images together. It will align and stack them
automatically, and you can even have it choose the best quality images to
use !

Tim

 

Anyone notice that it's upside down?
(look at his location...LOL).

I'm impressed. I can't get anywhere near as good a shot around here
(Toronto), what with all the light pollution.

 

LOL, must have twisted heading over on the big fat Pan Pacific fibre (note
correct spelling).

 

Light pollution has no effect on shots of the Moon or planets. They
are bright enough so
they aren't drowned out like "deep sky" objects. What does degrade
images of planets
and the Moon are things like heat being released at night from
buildings and paved roads.
Also, an unsteady atmosphere (causes stars to twinkle) further degrade
images.
That's why solar system objects show the most detail (the images are
most steady)
if you can avoid these sources of degradation. Places like Florida
offer very good "seeing conditions" and they allow people to take
excellent images. In Toronto seeing is generally
moderate to poor, with good nights occuring mostly on damp summer
nights when the atmosphere is steady.