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I stacked 40 phone shots of the moon last Tuesday and the result honestly surprised me
Last Tuesday I stood in my backyard in Tucson with my phone taped to a cheap 70mm scope and shot about 40 frames of the moon, just holding the shutter down in burst mode. I figured most of them would be junk and maybe one would be decent. When I loaded them into a free stacking program on my laptop, the software lined up 28 of the frames and tossed the blurry ones. The final image was sharper than anything I ever got from a single shot, and I could actually make out the crater rays near Copernicus, which never showed up before. What I learned is that the atmosphere is what kills single phone shots, since it wobbles every frame a little differently. Stacking averages out that wobble and keeps the real detail. It took me maybe 20 minutes total, and I did not need a tracking mount or anything fancy. Has anyone else tried stacking with just a phone and a tripod, or am I late to this party?
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luna_wright29d ago
How did you handle the alignment when the moon drifts across the frame between shots? With a fixed tripod the moon moves a little each frame so the software has to shift and rotate everything to match, and I'm curious if the free program you used did that automatically or if you had to pick a reference frame yourself. Also what shutter speed did you use per frame, since at 70mm on a phone sensor you have some room before motion blur kicks in but burst mode tends to pick whatever the phone thinks is right.
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