That feature on my camera is ruining my moon shots

I've been taking photos of the full moon for months and kept getting these weird halos around the edge. Last week I realized my noise reduction setting was on high and it was blurring out all the fine detail. Has anyone else had to turn off in-camera processing to get crisp lunar photos?

2 comments

2 Comments

margaret2344d ago

Oh jeez, noise reduction is such a sneaky thing. I had this issue with my old Nikon where I was trying to shoot star trails and the camera kept smoothing everything into mushy blobs. It took me like three nights of frustration before I realized the long exposure noise reduction was on. Ever since then, I just turn all that automatic stuff off and deal with noise in post processing. But the moon shots, yeah, high ISO with noise reduction just kills those fine craters and details. I remember reading somewhere that some cameras even apply noise reduction to raw files without telling you, which is crazy.

nancy8204d ago

Wait, some cameras really sneak noise reduction into raw files without telling you? That's wild. Honestly, I had the exact same nightmare with my Sony a6000 when I tried shooting the Milky Way for the first time. Ngl, I spent a whole weekend driving out to a dark sky spot, setting up my tripod, and getting all these shots that looked like someone smeared Vaseline on the lens. Took me forever to figure out it was the long exposure noise reduction just dumping all those tiny stars into mushy gray blobs. Once I turned that off and learned to stack exposures, everything changed.