I used to think stacking 10 second exposures was pointless for moon shots, but one clear night in Boise changed my mind.

2 comments

2 Comments

Seriously? Stacking shots is a game changer for the moon. A single exposure blows out the bright parts or loses the craters in shadow. Stack ten quick ones and you suddenly get all that detail back. It's like pulling a clean image out of the noise. My old single shots look flat now.

black.laura12d ago

Actually, it's not really about pulling detail from noise. The moon is so bright that noise isn't the main issue. Stacking those short exposures is mostly for fixing atmospheric distortion, the "wobble" you see on hot nights. It lets you sharpen details that a single frame would have blurry from the air moving. You still need to expose correctly for the highlights.