Number of frames for Proms and Surface?

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I have been changing the number of frames I shoot for the proms and the surface based on the air's turbulence. When it is fairly calm, you can actually focus the image, which is not that often where I am I shoot 500 frames for the proms and 1,000 for the surface, however especially this time of year my air is really turbulent.

In about 3-5 seconds you may see the sun snap into focus once and focusing is really tough. In these conditions I have been shooting 1,000 for the proms at about 20ms and 40 fps, and 2,000 to 3,000 for the surface at about 10ms and about 70 frames a second.

I am happy with what I have been getting on the surface but wonder about the number of frames for the proms, I know they move a lot so is 1,000 too many to get "sharp" results or would 500 be better although the air is really bad?

Using the Mt Wilson solar imaging scale (1-5) my seeing is usually about 2.5 at best. during the summer it will be 3 or higher


The 5 stages of seeing as presented in the Mount Wilson scale
• 1Solar image looks like a circular saw blade. Completely out of focus. ...
• 2Solar image is always fuzzy and out of focus. ...
• 3Solar image about half the time sharp and half the time fuzzy. ...
• 4Solar image more often sharp than not. ...
• 5Solar image looks like an engraving.

[Lowjiber]

I am happy with what I have been getting on the surface but wonder about the number of frames for the proms, I know they move a lot so is 1,000 too many to get "sharp" results or would 500 be better although the air is really bad?

This may sound crazy, but I'll often take 2-3 stacks with AutoStakkert with different percentages of frames. I'll then compare each to see which gives me the better "shot' to work with. Since the quality graph in AS! organizes the frames from best to worst, I think fewer stacked frames are often better.

Clear Skies

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

John
That is what I do normally, multiple exposures of a object, prom or surface, but mainly it has been for focus, I keep trying to nail focus when you have bad air it is very hard to focus. but I also sometimes will do various numbers of frames although on proms usually 500 or 1000 but surface can be 1k2k3k or even 5k

One comment, yes the graph organizes by quality, but what I seem to see for me is that maybe 1 out of every ten shots is in focus so they are on the left side of the graph, the more frames you can take the more likely you are to get sharp shots BUT the longer you expose the more the prom moves leading to smearing (right?)

I usually stack 50 frames, have looked at 25 frames but you seem to get more noise the less frames stacked. 50 out of 1,000 has a better shot at all being sharp than 50 out of 500

My air due to the moisture off the ocean, the factory behind me and the houses behind me is very unstable most days. Also our humidity a DRY DAY is 60% humidity, most days are in the 80% range