One comment about my moon shots made me ditch my tripod forever

Tbh I used to haul a beefy tripod up to this hill outside Austin every new moon for like 2 years. Then a guy named Dave at a meetup looked at my stacked image and said, 'You know your stars are soft because your shutter drag is fighting the wind, right?' I felt kind of dumb because he was spot on. So I switched to a lightweight star tracker, bumped my ISO from 800 to 3200, and cut my exposure down to 45 seconds max. The first night out with the new setup I got sharp craters on the moon and way tighter star trails. It cost me $180 for the tracker but I can hike twice as far now. Has anyone else had a random stranger's feedback totally rewire their whole shooting process?

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terryw6715d ago

Wait, is that hill outside Austin the one with the old radio tower on top, because I swear I ran into a guy named Dave there once who was shooting with a lens cap on and still getting better results than me? Anyway, your story hits close to home because for years I refused to use any kind of timer or remote shutter release, thinking I was steady enough if I just held my breath. Then this random lady at a star party watched me press the button by hand and said, 'You're shaking the whole rig, you know that,' and yeah, she was right, my long exposures were all a little mushy. I felt like an idiot because I'd read about mirror slap a hundred times but never figured it applied to me. Now I always use a 2 second delay even on a solid rock, and it sounds dumb but my sharpness went up way more than when I spent triple that money on a new lens. Funny how the cheapest fix is usually the one somebody has to point out to you.

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