Jupiter practice shot

I need to do some manual focus bracketing. I never got it completely in focus. Even when using the focus magnification on my camera it is hard to see if it is perfectly in focus. Any tips for hitting focus? I'm using my telescope & barlow listed in my signature and the Sony A7RII. This was just the first round of testing tonight. I may go back out in a few minutes and try to shoot another. I dunno if this is about the best I should expect from my equipment, but I think that there is definitely some room for improvement in my technique.

Excellent. Very clear. Color could shift a tad to blue.
As a single shot image, hard to make it any better.
Of course things could be different if you use RegiStax with a short, say 90 second of AVI file processing.

samsen wrote in post #17925216
Excellent. Very clear. Color could shift a tad to blue.
As a single shot image, hard to make it any better.
Of course things could be different if you use RegiStax with a short, say 90 second of AVI file processing.

Thanks! I forgot about the technique of extracting a frame from a movie. I'm definitely going to shoot a movie tonight, thanks for the reminder. I don't have my video processing tools installed on this computer so it will take longer to process it, but I'll just grab the source so I have it for when I can do the editing. I'm also going to do some focus bracketing, which should help me hit the focus a little better, I hope.

Nice test shot. Don't forget that with the video file, you will be getting a whole bunch of frames. The software will pick what you tell it to pick. Maybe the others can give you a better answer, but I'd guess 200 frames from a 90 sec clip if your conditions are good.

Toxic Coolaid wrote in post #17926065
Nice test shot. Don't forget that with the video file, you will be getting a whole bunch of frames. The software will pick what you tell it to pick. Maybe the others can give you a better answer, but I'd guess 200 frames from a 90 sec clip if your conditions are good.

Yeah, I've never even looked at RegiStax yet. But several people have recommended it. I think my camera can shoot something like 100 fps at 4K, though I may step it down to Super 35 for this video. I haven't had this camera very long yet, so I'm still learning all its functions, configuring my custom buttons and custom menu, getting comfortable with the change of controls from Canon to Sony, etc. All the growing pains of a new camera combined with a system switch. Only time and practice will solve those issues, but in the long run I think I am going to like the Sony controls more than the Canon controls.

read up on Registax. Higher res is not always better. Seems like 640x640 crop works well.

Toxic Coolaid wrote in post #17926283
read up on Registax. Higher res is not always better. Seems like 640x640 crop works well.

The same seems to be true of video captured with the Sony A7RII, so switching to Super 35 instead of 4K is probably best for both. I have a lot to learn about both RegiStax and my new camera's video capabilities, though I didn't really buy this body for video. I appreciate the guidance, thanks.

Normally "webcam" resolutions work best. You'd think big megapixels cameras would be king here, but that's not why the image looks soft.

It looks soft because Jupiter is tiny. Even at opposition (tomorrow is opposition... the point where Earth "passes" Jupiter as we go around the Sun because Jupiter takes about 12 Earth years so we pass Jupiter every 13 months) when Jupiter is as close and as large as it will be all year Jupiter is only 44 arc-seconds from edge to edge. That's tiny.

The moon (in contrast) is about 30 arc-minutes. That makes the disk of the moon nearly 41x wider than the disk of Jupiter.

With atmospheric "seeing" conditions, you'll be hard pressed to get any single tack-sharp image. But when you shoot video, some will be better than others and some will be partially better than others.

Programs like Registax sift through your images and find the best frames automatically and then combine the best parts to create a result which is much sharper than any single image would ever be on it's own.

There are numerous tutorials on YouTube. Here's one: https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=ALqQfExMRBA

But you can find lots of these. The basics are fairly easy. The important thing is that it wants you to feed it a ".AVI" video (if whichever camera you used doesn't make .AVI files -- and most don't -- there are utilities to convert the video.)

Registax and AutoStakkert2 (the other planetary image stacking program) are both free -- but they only run on Windows. If you have a Mac you'd need Windows running in a Virtual Machine (e.g. VMware Fusion or something similar).

Toxic Coolaid wrote in post #17926283
Nice test shot. Don't forget that with the video file, you will be getting a whole bunch of frames. The software will pick what you tell it to pick. Maybe the others can give you a better answer, but I'd guess 200 frames from a 90 sec clip if your conditions are good.

---------------

Toxic Coolaid wrote in post #17926283
read up on Registax. Higher res is not always better. Seems like 640x640 crop works well.

True.

Let me give you some anatomy and analysis into the process, that might help to understand what software does and what are the factors you may want to take into consideration when shooting or when processing:

Its not the resolution but the frame rate that matters. Each frame picture might be affected by the atmospheric imperfections so the more you have, in shortest time, the better you are. That is both in terms of having a better sample to select from and then the photons gathered.

You want a camera that gives you highest frame rate & you want to set it at the highest fps rate your camera is capable off. The rez really depends on the original circle of your subject, on the sensor, In your case, Jupiter with current (Or for any common telescope on the earth) magnification, its still very small and a 640 pixel size is perfect.
But don't worry, you can always select the right frame size in post processing (That small frame size really helps to pc to shine and go fast) and before storm hits you, take the picture/video.

Software will pickup as many best frames as you set the threshold. Remember RegiStax only understands AVI or a few common format video clips and more likely than not, you have to convert your high rez video format into AVI with a converter software. The advantage of dedicated telescope cameras or web cams that are converted for this purpose, is that they usually give you AVI as native output. You may have to install a software for this conversion.

With good sky I see you own, you should go and set threshold on at least 90% or more.

Even at 60 fps for 90 sec, video clip, assuming you use a remote control to prevent shake in initial and last frames that makes those images distorted and useless, you should be having more than 5000 frames (5400 frames to be precise) to pick the best and that is why the Registax images are always better than a single frame image, even if you set the threshold at 50% of best frames or less that is still more than 2500 frames. And even farther in processing you get to chose the better frame with the help of graphics and histogram.

Though it may sound complex, it is actually easy once you get your hands dirty in the process.
So go for it and the more you do your "Trial and error" the better result you are going to have.
Hope this helped and Have fun.

Can i jump onto this post also please and ask a question that is also about shooting Jupiter, i have a 4K Photo setting available in my FZ300, that does a burts at 30 frames a second but it can only record in Jpeg not RAW, it does not offer any merging ability afterwards but i can go through all the seperate frames till i found the best one.
I could also use the in built digital extenders in this mode with Jpeg to get some closer images.

Would this work as you explained above?


P.

Well, I'm getting set up for the oppositon, which I won't be able to shoot until 2:30, but I wanted to check out the Orion Nebula. Turns out, just a couple minutes ago, the nebula passed by a geostationary satellite. There is a faint star that is not moving relative to my scope, but the fixed field of stars moved past it. Pretty sweet.

TCampbell wrote in post #17926664
With atmospheric "seeing" conditions, you'll be hard pressed to get any single tack-sharp image. But when you shoot video, some will be better than others and some will be partially better than others.

I've started shooting Jupiter with 5 frame bursts and 9 frame bracket bursts as well. Because yeah, you'll find that the focus is better in one of those images than the others.

I don't have a remote for this camera yet, my birthday is in a couple weeks and it's on the list. But I'm shooting with a 10 second delay on all my shots. The Sony A7RII can do a 10s delay before doing a continuous burst of 5 frames of the same exposure settings, or a 9 frame bracket.

heldGaze wrote in post #17927437
Well, I'm getting set up for the oppositon, which I won't be able to shoot until 2:30, but I wanted to check out the Orion Nebula. Turns out, just a couple minutes ago, the nebula passed by a geostationary satellite. There is a faint star that is not moving relative to my scope, but the fixed field of stars moved past it. Pretty sweet.

My guess is it is AMC-9, as I added a bunch of geostationary satellites to Stellarium in that area, and it had the brightest magnitude, although some of the satellites had no magnitude listed, so I cannot be certain. Any idea on how to figure out what it is?

Pagman wrote in post #17927343
Can i jump onto this post also please and ask a question that is also about shooting Jupiter, i have a 4K Photo setting available in my FZ300, that does a burts at 30 frames a second but it can only record in Jpeg not RAW, it does not offer any merging ability afterwards but i can go through all the seperate frames till i found the best one.
I could also use the in built digital extenders in this mode with Jpeg to get some closer images.

Would this work as you explained above?


P.

You are absolutely welcome to ask any question as long as you like to discus. I guess we all learn thought these kind of interactions.

You seem to have two good questions/concerns here:

First of all:
Please be carful when using the term RAW in relation to still photography vs Videography. Difference is H-U-G-E (Donald Trump type!), but you didn't do that and if I am correct, you are asking if you shoot in high rez rapid bust-still-mode jpg (continuous Mode as Canon refers to) and then feed that as video to software.
Am I correct?
If so, absolutely no advantage.

As said, what you need to have, (that is for a small object such as Jupiter), is a very small size high megapixel sensor, with densely packed pixels, like iPhone sensor (As opposed to same megapixel size sensor, in APC or FF) (And here we are not concern of higher Noise to Signal ratio that happens inherently with these type of sensors compare to same megapixel larger sensors), even a 640x480 that can shoot at very rapid rate, say 120 fps, is all you need not vice versa say 6000x4000 MP at 5fps.
That would be the perfect scenario.

Also don't forget that a software like RegiStax needs to be feed by AVI not series of still images, though you can covert it to avi later on (Waste of effort).

If you can select all the good images, align and then stack in some other software, like CS, yes you can go that route but compare the many thousands of images that RegiStax uses from a minute or 90 sec video clip, to peak the best ones, automatically (Almost) to the tens of images that you peak visually, guess which should be better.

Second part of your question: Never get fooled by the so Called "Digital Zoom" that is nothing but a marketing gimmick to sell a lower item with apparent much more fallacious high grade look, to unaware customer.
Why? If you take any image you took at said rez and crop the center half of that into an new image, congratulations, you already own a 4x lens by virtue of that simple crop....a.k.a digital zoom. But guess what you lost? All the corner field that was present on the original image without crop and wont show on digital zoom in first place.
This is the exact difference.
You only loss, when using "Digital Zoom" that is why on smart hands, it is best to be turn digital zoom off and never used. After all what is the purpose of losing 3/4 field of your image to be happy of having a digital zoom when your real resolution has not changed a bit, only you lost the periphery of image.

If I am wrong in understanding your question, please explain more.