So in the session on the 18th of this month (October 2024), I shot about half a dozen moon images. And something occurred to me today when I was perusing them ... the fact that every shot is unique when shooting an object that is small and a quarter million miles away (ish).
The reasons for this include:
- seeing -- at any given moment, there is turbulence in the atmosphere that very slightly distorts portions of the image ... shooting multiple copies of the same image can give you options to choose from that are very slightly sharper, and this is that image ...
- shutter shock -- depending on the camera, the shutter itself can vibrate a bit, and create a tiny fraction of shake ... this is not all that common when shooting the moon since it is very bright, but we're talking tiny amounts that only show up at magnification ...
- vibration -- your tripod will always vibrate a wee bit ... such things as wind, a clunky shutter, not using the timer to release the shutter, and so on ...
- focus -- tiny variations in focus can affect sharpness ... always best to manually focus and switch off AF so the camera does not choose to change it
So I was looking at the other moon shots I took during this session (only a few actually) and found that there was one that stood out just a bit. It just seemed really sharp. So I performed as subtle a processing session as I could and found that this copy of the moon feels much sharper with less sharpening. I like it a lot, especially the top and top right edges. The detail there feels really real as opposed to heavily sharpened.
Anyway ... enjoy ...
