VidThreeNorth
No longer a newbie, moving up!
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I have never tried astrophotography in any serious way, and this attempt is still not what I would call serious. This Fall, I decided to record the "Harvest Moon" -- yes, that is what this particular Full Moon is called. At most I will say that I am fairly satisfied with the result.
If you want to do "serious" astrophotography, you will probably not bother with video. "Astro" is usually done with the goal of achieving finest detail. The simple truth is that you can always do better with a "still" picture. If that is what you are after, then the only none-obvious thing to keep in mind is that you want to take your picture as close to "straight up" as you can, because the more vertical your aim, the less atmosphere the light will pass through, which means the least loss of detail you will suffer.
Since you are not going to get the best detail with a video, what can be a reasonable goal? That might be to get an "interesting" video, or in other words, something "artsy". There are a couple of possibilities. You can try to have something interesting in the composition, like buildings or mountains or trees, or you can try to get something interesting to happen. If you are looking for these possibilities, your approach would likely be the opposite of a "still" photographer. That is to say, you would want to keep your camera pointed low -- say horizon up to 20 degrees up from the horizon. The lowest angles will give you the landscapes, and a little above might still give you a chance at aircraft landing and taking off, or birds flying in the night.
I tried to work early in the night to keep my cameras low. I tried three cameras, one after the other. The first, my Sony CX240B did a terrible job. The moon is shaking all over the place despite using digital stabilizing. The second camera, my Yi-M1, I have not even bothered to check the files yet. The lens was my 150mm (zoom) which resulted in a very small moon in the frame. I think I need at least 300mm for that camera. The third camera, my Sony CX405 actually did quite well. The sensor-shift stabilization smoothed out the jitters from the breeze, which got through my tripod, and the auto-focus did fairly well with just a bit of visible pulsing (though that might actually be caused by the atmosphere).
Exposure is manual and focus is automatics.
There is only a short "feature" section from 1:45 - 1:50 where some birds fly through. The rest is just the moon. When it comes down to it, staring at the moon which is just steadily rising is not that interesting, so I did pick a nice piece of background music.
[2019-1007 added following file data]
Lens @ 57mm (probably f/1.8)
- sensor shift stabilization "Standard"
- exposure "Manual" (about mid-way on indicator)
Source File:
Recorded 2019-09014 22:14, length 6:08,
size 2,379,434,724 bytes
1920 x 1080 x ~29.95 fps
Video Data rate: 49,804 kbps
Total bitrate: 51,339 kbps
Audio Bit rate: 1535 kbps
Channels 2 (stereo)
Audio sample rate 48 kHz.
[2019-11-17 20:12]
According to the manual, the 35mm film equivalent focal length of the lens at full optical zoom, which is what I used, is about 805mm.
The source file was 50 mbps. I processed this to 25 mbps in Pinnacle Studio 21 Ultimate which was uploaded.
If you want to do "serious" astrophotography, you will probably not bother with video. "Astro" is usually done with the goal of achieving finest detail. The simple truth is that you can always do better with a "still" picture. If that is what you are after, then the only none-obvious thing to keep in mind is that you want to take your picture as close to "straight up" as you can, because the more vertical your aim, the less atmosphere the light will pass through, which means the least loss of detail you will suffer.
Since you are not going to get the best detail with a video, what can be a reasonable goal? That might be to get an "interesting" video, or in other words, something "artsy". There are a couple of possibilities. You can try to have something interesting in the composition, like buildings or mountains or trees, or you can try to get something interesting to happen. If you are looking for these possibilities, your approach would likely be the opposite of a "still" photographer. That is to say, you would want to keep your camera pointed low -- say horizon up to 20 degrees up from the horizon. The lowest angles will give you the landscapes, and a little above might still give you a chance at aircraft landing and taking off, or birds flying in the night.
I tried to work early in the night to keep my cameras low. I tried three cameras, one after the other. The first, my Sony CX240B did a terrible job. The moon is shaking all over the place despite using digital stabilizing. The second camera, my Yi-M1, I have not even bothered to check the files yet. The lens was my 150mm (zoom) which resulted in a very small moon in the frame. I think I need at least 300mm for that camera. The third camera, my Sony CX405 actually did quite well. The sensor-shift stabilization smoothed out the jitters from the breeze, which got through my tripod, and the auto-focus did fairly well with just a bit of visible pulsing (though that might actually be caused by the atmosphere).
Exposure is manual and focus is automatics.
There is only a short "feature" section from 1:45 - 1:50 where some birds fly through. The rest is just the moon. When it comes down to it, staring at the moon which is just steadily rising is not that interesting, so I did pick a nice piece of background music.
[2019-1007 added following file data]
Lens @ 57mm (probably f/1.8)
- sensor shift stabilization "Standard"
- exposure "Manual" (about mid-way on indicator)
Source File:
Recorded 2019-09014 22:14, length 6:08,
size 2,379,434,724 bytes
1920 x 1080 x ~29.95 fps
Video Data rate: 49,804 kbps
Total bitrate: 51,339 kbps
Audio Bit rate: 1535 kbps
Channels 2 (stereo)
Audio sample rate 48 kHz.
[2019-11-17 20:12]
According to the manual, the 35mm film equivalent focal length of the lens at full optical zoom, which is what I used, is about 805mm.
The source file was 50 mbps. I processed this to 25 mbps in Pinnacle Studio 21 Ultimate which was uploaded.
Last edited:
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/32/32807-d5379cd3a34c7d2ac3535361dd969c10.jpg?1619735667)
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/32/32810-094482c1ef1c76eae62a96107013a72e.jpg?1619735669)