Since I was having success imaging the moon, I was cocky enough to try for some planet shots. Jupiter was up and looking super bright (not the least of the reasons being it’s nice and close right now), so I went for it. The 25mm Plossl was my best bet previously, so I went back to it for my go-to lens for the attempt. Of course, it’s not going to get me very close shots, it’s pretty low power, but what the heck.
I started methodically…At ISO 24, I experimented with various short-duration bursts…1/800th of a second:
Then 1/320th of a second:
1/250th of a second:
1/200th of a second:
1/125th of a second:
1/80th of a second:
I had a lot of trouble seeing what the planet and moons were looking like in the viewer, so almost impossible to tell if I was getting a good image (i.e., in focus) or not. I tried to use the moons to get them pinpoint sharp, but even that was a challenge. Overall, at ISO 24, I would say the best image was somewhere between 1/125s and 1/200s. Cropped and shrunk, here is the 1/125s…I get a hint of bands on the planet, and the moons are faint:
At 1/200s, I get bands and no moons:
I tried bumping the ISO up to 32 next, and 1/100s…for some reason, the planet went almost blue rather than white, and I still managed some bands:
At ISO 50, 1/20s still had a bit of a hint of colour shadings:
While at 1/8s, it was all washed out:
When I boosted to ISO 160, even at 1/20s, it was all white too:
Similarly for ISO 250, 1/20s:
And again at ISO 800, 1/20s:
Further attempts at ISO 2000 produced just more white planets, and finally ISO 9000 just blew everything out in the image:
All in all, I would not say it was a screaming pile of success for planets. Fun, some interesting stuff, but I don’t have the methodology down for planets.
