sadly pixel shift and the moon won't become friends

My first thought is a tracking mount, but atmospheric turbulence might make pixel shifting worthless. Or, it might be a case of many tries under good seeing conditions until you get a lucky sequence. That tends to be true of most astrophotography these days. IMO, pixel shifting is anything but a gimmick but it's just another tool in the ever expanding toolbox. Works great for some things but not everything.

There are some reasonably inexpensive tracking mounts now, compared to long ago. You can also build one- look up Poncet table, but that's far from instant gratification.

Just FYI, there are several different tracking rates. For perfection, which may be important for pixel shift imaging, you need to track at the lunar rate (14.685 arcsec/sec), as opposed to sidereal (15.041 arcsec/sec.) A good mount should allow that change.

I timed a pixel shift 16 image sequence and it took just under 2 seconds.

Ruby Rod said:

My first thought is a tracking mount, but atmospheric turbulence might make pixel shifting worthless.

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Yes, that's true. Fortunately I go to some places where, at times, there's really little in the atmosphere that would cause an issue. I'll be in one of those spots in a couple of months, so I'll let you know then ;~).

zephxiiii said:

Aural said:

To the people in this thread saying that PixelShift is just a gimmick - stop blaming the tool instead of the user. We live in an age where the solution to most of our issues is just one quick Google search away. Here's one for example.

https://www.photoartfromscience.com...nd-moon-nikon-z8-pixel-shift-and-autostakkert

Be a little more resourceful or at least open-minded before dismissing things so quickly.

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Exactly, I've seen some awesome Pixelshift results!

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I think in this result here, it's more user error. Shutter was maybe left open too long, hence the image also looks a bit blown out, and as a result, the moon moved. I also think that some people forget that PS requires a scene where nothing is moving to work properly and while the move doesn't really move that fast, if you use a fast enough shutter speed it should work fine. I mean when I'm shooting the moon, I often find myself at say 1/50s or faster in many cases, and even a full moon, you should be able to get a sharp shot (and perhaps multiple ones) if you tweak the exposure so you can get say 1/100s or so. So I think part of this issue above was an exposure problem, that makes it look like a failed PS job, and it is but not because of the technology, but rather how it was captured (the settings). There are no actual exposure settings so this is just my guess based on what I see here (there was enough time during the exposure that the moon moved slightly).

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Thom Hogan said:

fotopaul said:

I had the great plan to use the Z8's pixel shift feature to create double resolution images of the moon with my strongly limited long-lens selection (trusty old 70-300 AF-S with a FTZII) but the results are sadly not usable at all. First I thought it was some fault with my software or the pictures, but now I read on a lightroom forum the moon's movement might actually already be too fast for the pixel shift timing.

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Yes, the moon moves, and it moves relatively fast as others have pointed out.

What no one seems to have yet figured out is that in this particular case it's the software that's at fault, not pixel shift per se.

Assuming your capture was on a very solid support system, the moon moves in a known and constant fashion. Thus you have images taken over a period of time that need a different alignment than a simple stack to recapture the pixel shift advantages. Knowing the time of each image taken and your location, the images could be restacked to correct for the moon's motion and you'd get the pixel shift advantages back. NX Studio is dirt stupid in this regard, and just does the simple stack.

This is one reason why I tell people to be careful about what images they delete. Processing capabilities are relatively far behind hardware capabilities. Eventually someone gets the software done right, and a previously less usable image becomes usable again.

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Well pixel-shift is not entirely without fault here. Assuming a 300mm focal length as in the OP, the horizontal field of view is ~ 6.9 degrees, so each Z8 pixel spans ~ 6.9*3600/8256 ~ 3 arcsec. The apparent motion of the moon is ~ 15 arcsec/sec or 5 pixels/sec. Assuming 20 FPS, it takes at least ~0.2 seconds to complete the minimum 4 shots sequence, by which the moon will have shifted by ~ 1 pixels, more if pixel shift significantly impact FPS.

So full color information in each pixel is likely lost, regardless of the stacking software used, at which point I'm wondering if there is still an advantage in stacking pixel-shift images over stacking a regular burst?

Thom Hogan said:

fotopaul said:

I had the great plan to use the Z8's pixel shift feature to create double resolution images of the moon with my strongly limited long-lens selection (trusty old 70-300 AF-S with a FTZII) but the results are sadly not usable at all. First I thought it was some fault with my software or the pictures, but now I read on a lightroom forum the moon's movement might actually already be too fast for the pixel shift timing.

Click to expand...

Yes, the moon moves, and it moves relatively fast as others have pointed out.

What no one seems to have yet figured out is that in this particular case it's the software that's at fault, not pixel shift per se.

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100% - as rdavy and Aural pointed out, using Autostakkert can actually yield great results - https://www.photoartfromscience.com...nd-moon-nikon-z8-pixel-shift-and-autostakkert

Absolutely second that. To me the biggest upside is the suppression of color moiré on small wiry details (leafless trees in the distance, cables, dots, grills etc...)

I wasn't planning the shot at all, I just put the camera on the tripod and fiddled around a little to get a reasonably good exposed image and then used the 32 image pixel shift. I wasn't thinking of how much the moon moves and was even using longer shutterspeeds (ISO 100, F8, 1/20s in one series f.e.)

I think the indiviual frames look fine, at least they're about what I would expect from my lens.

I was taking several 32 shots series over the course of a few seconds each and then combining them all to a single shot as I thought this should work.

It did not, as the movement of the moon was way too much. But the single shot images look reasonable enough for me at least, fwiw.

Wow this is a pretty cool software. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

Bruno Zarokian said:

Absolutely second that. To me the biggest upside is the suppression of color moiré on small wiry details (leafless trees in the distance, cables, dots, grills etc...)

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Agreed. Not a gimmick.

For the OP, due to changes in seeing (atmospheric perturbations), stacking frames is generally regarded as better than pixel shift for the solar system objects.

I stacked a selection of the better frames from about 450 still DX jpegs captured handheld at 60fps (Z9, 180-600+1.4xTC) using Registax to create the image below:



Lazy effort. The result is serviceable. (don't confuse stacking still images with focus stacking)

A stacked image from a larger aperture telescope (>6"/ the more the merrier/ focused correctly) could yield substantially better results. (the bigger the scope/ magnification, the greater the benefit of a tracking mount; the duration of captures has to be brief due to rotation)

The astrophotography forum may provide you with some other ideas. Clear skies!