Settings for shooting full lunar disc for an ISS transit?

[ghubing]

Hello,

What would be good settings in Backyardnikon for shooting the full lunar disc during an ISS transit?  I'm using an Nikon D5500 attached to an 8" telescope.  

Yesterday I tried to do this.  I captured an AVI that includes the transit, but the ISS doesn't show any detail in individual frames.  It seems like this is due to undersampling--i.e. that the unzoomed liveview resolution is too low.  The scope should have been able to provide enough detail (1950mm focal length, 200mm aperture), but the video looks pretty pixelated.

Backyardnikon offers settings like shutter speed in the video options, but changing it didn't seem to change anything about the video being created, which seems to just use the standard liveview mode regardless.  

Is there a way to capture higher resolution full-sensor video through BYNIKON for full-disc lunar imaging?  Or would I have to operate the camera manually to do that?

Thanks in advance,

Garrett

[admin]

When in planetary, you need to pause live view, change change ISO, then resume live view.  This is how Nikon works.  Changes can no be made while the mirror is up on most Nikon models.

[ghubing]

Thanks for the response.  So I can change the ISO used for liveview if I pause it, that will help a little bit.  

The big issue though is the resolution of the full frame in liveview.  The resulting AVI I captured yesterday is just 640 x 424 pixels...  That's just not enough to give a decent full-moon image.  It would be great if there were a way to shoot normal "HD Video" via BYN.  The D5500 is capable of 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution video capture.  

[astroman133]

I do not believe that the Nikon SDK allows a 3rd party app to shoot HD video.

You could shoot very short (~1/500 second) still images, however.

[admin]

BYN does not use the camera movie mode, only live view.

[ghubing]

OK understood, thanks for your responses!

[s3igell]

"Full HD" is only 1920x1080, while your D5500 Sensor is 6000x4000.  If you were to shoot in Full HD, you would get a rather pixelated and interpolated result.

Instead, using Planetary Imaging Mode you are getting a nearly 1:1 Pixel Ratio (which is the important element for actual "Resolution").

See this older post:

It seems that Nikon D7100 has a few "Oddities" with its LiveView - detailed on Review sites such as DPREVIEW.

 

In general, BYE/BYN Frame&Focus and Planetary modes are at the mercy of the LiveView data made available by the various DSLRs' SDKs.

This is almost always a redirected stream of the Image originally destined for the DSLR Rear LCD, and that dictates both the Size and ultimately the Resolution of the available LiveView Captured Image.  As the standard LiveView Image will have been designed for the DSLR User to see a LCD representation of the full Frame about to be recorded, and that Image Data (6000x4000 in D7100) needs to be "Reduced" to fit the smaller 640x480 LCD (640x424 size is likely due to lower area dedicated to Shooting Data Display).  Worse, that "Reduction" is performed by Interpolation which "mashes" the detail of a 9x9 pixel square of the DSLR Sensor into a single Pixel - destroying much of the Fine Detail which we (as Planetary Imagers) would want.  All this happens before the output is made available for the SDK to redirect to BYE/BYN.  Lucky for us, each DSLR implements a couple of Zoom LiveView modes where the Camera's Firmware "knows" that a smaller portion of the overall Sensor will be displayed onto the LCD and therefore "cheats" by avoiding the Interpolation process and simply stats with a Crop selection that might even be output as a 1:1 direct Pixel output (unfortunately not likely in the case of the D7100 where 6000 reduced to 640 is an odd 9.375:1 ratio).