Super Telephoto Moon Pic Tips and stacking to reduce noise 

One tip for you. Do not extend tripod legs, use it folded, and you'll be surprised by the difference in sharpness. 1 meter more over 180k kilometers doesn't matter. Use the tilt or flip screen for convenience.

I appreciate the fact that you thoroughly researched and tested your techniques before posting a RU-vid video. I sometimes find myself watching an instructional video which, instead of teaching me something, leaves me confused and wondering whether the instructor is just winging it without ever having gone through the process. Your video is organized, clear, and helpful. Thank you.

Thanks for the video Mike! I like this process and love shooting the moon. But I can see doing this process for regular photography every now and then to see what I get. For example, when shooting landscapes. Won't need as many images but it would interesting and would be different than shooting three or more different exposures. This video is getting me excited about photography again. Thanks again.

Nice video, thanks! I just did a similiar thing two days ago. I used a Nikon D7500 and a Sigma 150 - 600 mm with a Kenko 1.4 teleconverter. I didn't know how to use Photoshop to stack moon images so I learned something new from you. I first tried to use Registax but had a problem with it locking up every time. I then used Autostakkert and that worked for me. It produced a regular file as well as a sharpened file and the results were very good in my opinion. I did have to use Lightroom to crop and center each image first before stacking. I will check out PIPP as one user suggested.

Thanks for the Photoshop tips! I've done high res shots of the moon with a Nikon D850 with Nikon 800mm f5.6 AI-S with TC-301 2x converter so i'm definitely next time going to try stacking along with crop mode 👍🏻

Nice video! Helped me a lot! Thanks!

Nicely done. Great technique.

Cool. Nice use of stacking.

Very good Mike!

Excellent video and technique!!!!

I got some very sharp shots last night. Nikon D500 Nikon 200-500. Shot at ISO 100 , f/8 1/500 sec. Hand held. Cropped them of course and still very sharp and great detail. Tried my D810, but had better results with the 500. Shot in RAW. Full moon. First time I’ve had good results.

Great tutorial! Thank you! :)

Really really helpfull tutorial. Thanks a lot. Keep the good work, also, you got a new sub ;)

Why would anyone dislike this video? So we'll and clearly explained and beautiful shot too.

You are very good man, I am subscribed to your channel... Keep updating the new videos... Kudos... :)

Thanks, neat video. I personally like prime focus photography as well, the benefit is that it's usually cheaper, however you don't get the helpful autofocus and Vibration reduction, and for the scope that I have, a 4.5 inch Newtonian, there are many terrestrial subjects that are too close to take a clear photo of. It's interesting to note though, that through a telescope the photo comes out surprisingly detailed, without having to do any stopping down the aperture.

Dang tamron that's some crazy zoom. I don't have a ton of money so I use the panasonic 100-300. I thought that zoom was good but I was wrong. I guess I won't get that crazy resolution any time soon but I can still try this. But I missed the half moon that I like to do.

Good tutorial, Mike. I'm going to give this a try. I already tried it with Registax, but the program would just crash every time. I will say this FWIW, I took my photos with a Nikon D750 and the Nikon 200-500mm F/5.6 and got some really nice sharp, well exposed shots at a low ISO with just the right 1/2 of the moon showing. Settings ISO 50, shutter speed 1/80th, F.5/6. I'm pretty new to shooting the night sky, but my inkling is to shoot at lower ISO for less noise, but I understand sometimes we need higher ISO. Can't wait for a clear night, so I can get out with my new Rokinon 14mm F/2.8. Great videos.

Thank you for a clear explanation.

Very nice video thank you for sharing

Great video thanks for sharing

Great tutorial..

Lovely image - one question though; if you are exposing for highlights, rather than the whole frame, then your ISO won'tneed to change with the moon's phase, only its position in the sky (due to atmospheric dust/haze and absorbtion when close to the horizon)? The maximum brightness doesn't change with lunar phase, and you're only shooting for the sunlit parts, or am I missing something? Keep up the great work!

its very helpful video, thanks

This is a great video I’ve loved taking moon photos for a long time there’s something just magical about it. I recently acquired a really good telescope and I’m hoping this puts my moon photos over the top. As it pertains to stacking what would stop one from taking one moon photo and duplicating it as many times as you want and then stacking them, wouldn’t that combat the movement of the earth and ensure every photo is in the same exact arrangement? Thanks!

Awesome mike, I have the lens and camera but my converter is a 2x I’ve been using my d850 or d810 and never thought of using my 7200 but they both have done well. Thanks for the tips. Damn wind drove me back last night and its cold. I’m in cape may nj. And nights without wind in the fall and winter are hard to come by.

Good tutorial, thanks. I got similar results using a Nikon D750 with a Nikon 500mm zoom lens and a 1.4x teleconverter. Stacked 16 frames in Registax and got a nice sharp photo, same phase of the moon too. Post imaging cropped images are less than 1 MB so I can only enlarge the prints to a maximum of about 8x10. But it never occurred to me to use a crop sensor for a larger image. So I’m going to try this with my Nikon D7000 because a larger image means a sharper enlargements at 8x10 (I think)? Subbed.

Fantastic video I need to get into stacking and your video is really easy to follow through the stacking prosess. I HDR the moon the other day and it went ok for my first attempt. Will try stacking next time 👍

Great video, Mike! Question for you regarding the Tamron 150-600mm G2, or other lenses for that matter: Do you turn off VC for these types of shots?

OMG, finnaly somebody that actually cares about how image looks viewed @ 100%.. good video, great image, keep it up.

Thank you for showing me your process. For me I would have just finish my editing in Photoshop cuz there's so many more tools available then in Lightroom but that's just one person's opinion. I really appreciate the steps that you shown it is a very good tutorial on stacking with Adobe.

Good PS tutorial, but the focal length creates the same image on a full frame vs APC sensor. You are dealing with crop factor only . . . except, check your pixel pitch. A smaller sensor with smaller pixels will capture the same detail/sharpness as a larger sensor with larger pixels, considering both are equal in megapixels. And, a full moon is the same exposure as a quarter moon as you are exposing for the lit side of the moon . . . same sun, same distance. Otherwise, thumbs up.

Awesome vid. Great pics. I’m in the market for a new PC. Your demo was fast. What chipset do you have? How much memory? How much graphics memory? Are you using an SSD or HD “hard drive”? I have a Canon 90D with a Sigma 150-600 contemporary lens. I tried shooting the blood moon the other night. I was taking a lot of test shots and simply could not get any focus! The moon was like a white blob. I’ve since learned, in addition to what I learned from your vid, to turn off image stabilization. You didn’t mention focus. Do you have your canon set up for this shot with multiple focus points? A group of focus points? I’m not sure how Nikon terms their focus options. Thanks, Scott. H.

Great video and everything but i cant open all of the images as diferent layers ( version cs3 ). thanks anyway.

MIke, have you experimented with shooting with ISS on at focal lengths like that? I have had heard some guys suggesting this, but I have yet to hear anyone commit to saying it helps. I have tried it a few times but have had results up and down enough to not really be able to discern if it helps or it hurts. I would like to see what you think of the 2x TVC. I have a 1.4x Sony FE on my Sony A7R3 and the 1.4x TVC is good. I can tell if I put the frames side by side, but damn its pretty close. havent had a chance to try a 2x though but yea I have heard the same thing on 2x's

My ideal setup for moon photography is a Nikon D7100, 600mm f/4 ED-IF AIS Nikkor (manual focus) and TC-300, giving an effective focal length of 1800mm on FX. A very sturdy tripod is a must, I use a heavy duty Bogen studio tripod, as this setup weighs about 18 pounds. I simply lock the focusing ring on infinity and use f/8 and 1/ISO plus 2 stops to compensate for the teleconverter. The results are stunning, this image is essentially uncropped. youpic.com/image/14409763/crescent-moon-by-scott-murphy

I thought you blended the images after aligning them. You went right to Smart Object after aligning. Won't the PS just see the top image? Thanks

Hello Mike, got a question: my setup is D7500 w/ Sigma 150-600C. When I'm aligning the moon photos, I notice that each of them is slightly different than other. Mostly I shoot it when the moon is rising up high, and the air is cold since I'm in Canada. But all those moon images look like shooting a hot road where the hot air keep moving. Have you ever seen that? Or could it be a lens problem? I'm only 80% satisfied with the stacked result, the single image looks sharper but noisy after sharpening. The stacked onr isn't too back bit I want to make it even sharper and clearer. Thank you.

I followed your steps and had some great results. One question though: after I flatted it in photoshop it turned my raw file into a .tiff. I ended up exporting it as a .PNG file but is there a certain format I should export it as in order to preserve quality? I wish it could stay as a raw file somehow but I guess since were changing it, it can't be...

Hi Mike, thanks for another great video. I noticed in the comments you were trying different programs for potentially better results. Did you land on a program / workflow that you liked more than Photoshop? Cheers.

Hmm. Think I'll give this a go. My kit? Z9, 800 F6.3, 2xTC. Do you think it would make much diff if a lot more than your 14 frames was used?

Rather than waiting 2 seconds between photos, would enabling live view during the shot not kill any vibration from mirror slap?

New to this. Would you be able to use deepsky staker to achieve even better results? Or wont it make a difference?

great video thank you it helped me a lot as im new to all this, since my disability has gotten worse this has become my new hobby ive upgraded to a Nikon D3400 and a SkyWatcher Skymax 127 AZ-GTi WiFi Go-To, but been struggling with the correct settings for the camera to take a decent pic or record video of the moon it seems to be real grainy plz any more help would really be appreciated new subscribe here thumbs up

Hi Mike. I’ve a question for you. Hope you can help? When I tried this and went to “edit” “auto align layers” I got the message “layers do not overlap enough to detect alignment. In general images intended for alignment should overlap by approx 40%” Is there a way around this? Only trying to stack 10 images. Many thanks!

Do you remove distortions before stacking?

Sold me... I subscribed... 👍👍👍

I got photos like this with my Nikon P900 no stacking just a 24-2000 mm lens and tripod.

Thanks for the video! I did Exactly what you said, but my image only got less sharp.. what am I doing wrong? :P It did lose the noise but also sharpness.

Pretty sharp no BS.

Auto focus or manual? Did you use Spot metering and spot focal point?

Stack first then develop the image in LR or develop the individual pics in LR then stack?

I have (bad) news for you Mike, crop sensors don't increase resolution (anymore). "Apples to apples," a 24MP crop vs. a 24MP full frame, yes, you're getting a 1.4x "teleconverter" effect with no light loss (you keep that 1 stop of light). That 1.4x TC "gain" is by dint of pixel-packing, but it assumes a sufficiently sharp lens, at ~125 lp/mm. BUT compare a 24MP crop to a 42MP full frame, & you're only gaining 1.15x, not 1.4x, so now your so-called focal length reach is only "977mm" instead of "1200mm." It's a slippery slope from there, b/c the Olympus PEN-F has sensor-shifting super-resolution mode that outputs 80 megapixel files on a Micro 4/3rds sensor (crop factor 2x), the Hassy crop-645 sensor outputs 200 megapixel images (645-crop factor .75x relative to 35mm FF), each with presumably sharp glass to match. But ... what are their respective magnifications relative to 35mm-format full frame? Who knows?!?!? Realistically the best way to discuss this is about effective magnification, and whether your lens & sensor are well-suited to each other. The old standard had been 1 power of magnification per 25mm of reach, but with sharper lenses & sensors, it appears to me that what's really needed is a new, better metric for magnification &/or sharpness.

Have you noticed a difference in sharpness with a higher number of photos? I'm wondering if there is any benefit to taking say 100 photos instead of 10 or 15.

Wouldn’t hdr bracket give you more details do work with ?

I keep getting an error on photoshop that the layers don't overlap enough to auto-correct, even though I can't see any meaningful difference. Any idea what's up?

Two problems...firstly the Lightroom option to export to layers in Photoshop was greyed out. This I overcame by opening Adobe Bridge and sending the images to Photoshop as Layers from there. Second problem was that Photoshop couldn't auto-align, as it couldn't recognise 40% overlap. Apart from manually shifting the layers into alignment, is there an automated way around this snag?

Thank u for the wonderful video but when i try to Layer -> smart object -> Stack mode is disable, please help

Hello, maybe you mentioned it in the video, but when in your workflow did you sharpen the image? Before or after doing the stacking in photoshop? Thanks for the video!

would anyone know how to do the same with correl pro ?

Was it 14 pictures with the same settings? Or did the 14 pictures have different settings? thanks

Why not just auto align and auto merge in PS, flatten images, then finish editing in PS?

Super moon tonight too

Hi Mike, there seems to be an issue with aligning the images in Photoshop. I know your video is 3 years old, and Photoshop will have been updated in that time, but it seems that its refusing to align the images, saying not enough of the images are overlapping- saying it needs 40%. This is a real shame as I was looking fror a way to stac RAW files for moon shots. Do you have a work- around for thie issue as I havent been able to find one online anywhere. Thanks in advance.

For some reason neither are working for me!! Any tips??

Hi Mike. I have a question and i hope you can help. For some reason, when i try to Auto-Align Layers for 10 of my moon shots, photoshop doesn't align them. It does nothing. Any tips? is there anything i'm doing wrong? I'm doing exactly as you did. Thanks.

Using a crop sensor DOES NOT add magnification, it just crops the image!

Im still kind of confused. Why shoot at a high ISO to begin with? Isn't that our enemy? I was told to keep ISO as low as humanly possible when shooting anything. My pictures of the moon seem to be just fine when I'm shooting at an ISO of 200. So why shoot higher? Im still a beginner so any info would be great! Thanks Mike!

please explain how you saved the file in PS and exported to LR.

hello how you move the 14 photos from photoshop to lightroom thanx 7:25

i have followed up to where you saved in ps but then because you already had it in lr you skipped how to put it back in there iam trying to figure it out but i'm new to all this !!!!/

were those raw images that you were working with?

Do you use any filtering?

Wondering why you didn't adjust the color? The moon is not monochrome, it is made up of many minerals, which become more apparent when you adjust the color.

Mine won’t align, I get an error from photoshop saying they aren’t able to be aligned help anyone please!!!?

Is 14 enough? Would more work better or not?

So where is this extra sharpness coming from then?

here i am at 300mm :(

Tried it, but unfortunately Photoshop doesn't want to auto-align my moon layers - tell me the overlap should be at least 40%. (I shot a pretty dim moon, not even a quarter) So I tried manually algining all those handheld shots - worked ok, but the auto-align still doesn't work. And with this happening, this whole basically goes to hell, as you're not ending up with something sharper :-/ Gonna give it another shot soon :) Great tips though!

Good video but the smaller sensor does not increase magnification. It narrows the field of view to +.5 of the lens focal lingth. It's a crop factor not a .5 increase in magnification. Not being an ass, just being clear for the new guys to astrophotography.

Could you not have taken this a step further and used the super resolution technique?

Mike, great video but you make just one mistake. You said that with a quarter Moon you would adjust the exposure and raise the ISO. No, that is incorrect.. The brightness of the Moon is constant. You would use the same exposure regardless of the phase of the Moon. The only difference between phases of the Moon is how large the visible area of the Moon is, not the brightness of the Moon’s surface. If you use a spot meter on the Moon, then you would see this to be true. Metering the Moon any other way will give you misleading measurements.

Yes... I'm the 1K like.

Subtle hints of colour on the moon. Not artifacts. I will use shutter release next time on the moon.

ISO should be base. That's 101 stuff.

Add: Use a tripod that does not have a center post. even retracted they can introduce movement with a slight breeze. Use a prime lens.

You didn’t say if you changed the focus point for each of the 15 images? Or did you just take a series of 15 images letting the camera randomly focus each time ?

How do I do stacking?

This is overkill. Get a C90 in front of your Nikon and be done with it.

Very good Mike!