Showerthought: comparing my backyard moon pics from 2020 vs now is wild

I pulled up my old photos from August 2020 the other day when I had no clue what I was doing. They were all blurry and overexposed on my old phone camera mounted to a cheap tripod. Now in 2024 I use a used Canon DSLR with a 300mm lens I got for $150 on Facebook Marketplace. The difference in crater detail and surface color is night and day, all because I learned to stack frames in free software. Anyone else see a huge jump just from stacking registax or autostakkert?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray5624d ago

Dude @joseph48 is probably out there right now yelling at his blurry egg photos like "WHY WON'T YOU WORK." That frame stacking stuff is no joke though - I remember my first stacked image looking like someone smeared vaseline on the lens and called it art. Then I downloaded Autostakkert and suddenly my backyard moon looked like NASA stole my camera. The terminators basically wave at you when you get enough frames aligned right.

knight.uma4d ago

Oh man that "night and day" thing is SO true. My buddy Jake showed me his 2020 moon shots once and they honestly looked like a fuzzy potato. He stacked some frames last month and texted me at 2AM like "dude I can see the individual craters on the terminator." People really sleep on that free software magic.

joseph484d ago

Wait hold on, you're telling me he could SEE individual craters on the terminator line just from stacking? That's insane. I've been trying to get a decent shot of the moon for like three years and my best attempt still looks like a blurry egg. How many frames did he even stack to pull that off? I need to know what software he used because I'm clearly doing something wrong.