Thank you, Doug. HNY.

Took this image one night during the late summer months on the shore of the Delaware Bay. The light house is East Point in Heislerville, NJ. The bugs were not bad for that time of summer.
Details: Nikon D7100, 14mm Rokinon at f3.2, 20 sec, ISO 4500 and followed up by some Photoshop brightness/contrast manipulations. (yes, there is a tiny meteor near the center of the image.)

Only if the subject is surrounded by his/her food. Environmental portraiture by Newman reflects the work the person does, not just the place where the person works. (I knew Arnold for several years prior to his passing. He was both a great photographer and a great storyteller.)

Vinnie who?

From last June 13th (2022), I had the interesting problem of trying to capture the clouds and moon at 8 stops difference. Solution-combine the two at their appropriate exposures.

Nikon D7100 on an Apertura 72EDR refractor, mount non-tracking for obvious reasons. Telescope mounted on an old eBay bought heavy duty tripod. ISO 1100 for both; Moon, 1/1600 sec; clouds, 1/5 sec.

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Here in NJ, 3AM, Dec. 14th, was close to freezing, especially after 3 1/2 hours in the field so I went home. Before then I took 595 images of 15 secs each in an 18 sec block of time using the internal intervelometer of my Nikon D7100 with a 14mm Rokenon lens. I captured 39 meteors of which 2 images had 2 meteors each in the single 15 sec block of time. I stacked 20 of them and that is how the submitted picture came about. Interestingly, one (lower left quarter of image) of the 20 came from a different radiant than the 19 Geminid meteors. My colleague and I figured we saw close to 4 dozen. Best meteor shower since the 2002 Leonid meteor storm.

Yes, I could not find it with my 150-600 zoom and the funny thing is that the first early morning, I did not back off enough and just missed.

I live in Cherry Hill, NJ, about 10 miles from Philadelphia. Skylight is a problem. Still, Comet Leonard got me up at 5AM for the last 5 days (minus 2 of them with 100% cloud cover) and I was determined to see it. Of course I had those great close-up images of comets in mind and thought, just look up. So I used Stellarium to figure out where it should be and completely missed it the first day. The second day I was a bit closer and thought I had a smudge in the right area, but this picture from yesterday blew me away. As I annotated, in the upper right is the star Arcturus. The lower red arrow in the middle points to Comet/2021 Leonard, but surprises in the sky, the red arrow in the upper left points to a meteor. I know numerous smaller meteor showers are around (so points out Stellarium) but from where I was located, I am surprised I caught this. And Stellarium did not identify it as a satellite.
Details: Nikon D7100, 70-300 zoom at 70mm, f4.5, 10 sec exposure, ISO 6400. In PS(CS3ext), I had to majorly adjust the 'Levels', but that was all. Looking forward to the 12th (conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Leonard at 5:30PM).

This image suggests the Tamron 90mm macro I recently obtained is as good as advertised.
Details: Nikon D7100, Tamron 90 mm macro, f11, ISO 640, 1/2000 sec. (I'm happy.)

Thanks for the great reply. I'll keep your words (and sizes) in mind. I don't do video yet so I'm stacking about 20-to 50 individual images. I find if I keep the magnitudes of wavelet filters 3 or 4 to 6 down below 10, maybe even about 5, that the wavelets do better than unsharp. Now I'm also using a DSLR with a 600 mm lens so the large image may be more suitable to wavelet filtering. One other thing. Note the white border line in both your processed images but not on the original. That is an artifact.
I remove that white line in photoshop using the following:
duplicate image, on the copy go to Image > Adjustments > Replace color. I set the slider to pick up most of the image internal to the white line (this is a judgement call). I set the replacement to Lightness=0 and the actual replacement color to black (0,0,0). I then return to the Color of the Selection above so the fuzziness of the color does not intrude into the white line (middle image).
I remove whatever is left inside the white border by editing by a combination of a black paint can judiciously applied, lassoing some regions and deleting, and using the paintbrush. Then I use the resulting white line and layer it under the original. Using layer>align along the top and left edges, I then layer difference.
It does not work all the time, but when it works, it does great. In my moon shots, it worked perfectly. I just tried it with your bottom image...eh, not so good. I think it did not work because the downloaded image was 72 dpi while my originals is 300. I had more to work with with my photos. I include a before (top) and after(bottom) for you.

Thanks. BTW, I'm in Cherry Hill.
Best wishes,
Bill

Sorry, too long ago for the Murex. My procedure is to start at the front, step down the aperture to see what is in focus, take a picture, reset the focal plane for the next image within the hyperfocus zone but near the back of the zone and continue until I am through the object. No, I do not measure the steps.
The method works for me.

Hi Red6,
I too capture in RAW and JPG. I do know this. My original JPG's are always flatter than wavelet filtered images, but I also find it easy to overcompensate with wavelets.
Each of the levels 1-6 refers to a 2-dimensional filter of different sizes. I find 1 almost useless because it begins to enhance what used to be called the grain of the image. 6 and 5 are very useful. 2 I use sparingly and 3 carefully.
The other thing I've found is that using 4 thru 6, stay below 10, maybe even 5. I pick some region of the image that is flat and use the magnified image in RegiStax to watch what happens. For instance, the ridges radiating from Tycho are useful to set the wavelet filters. I use them to enhance the radiating lines but not excessively, almost like the contrast filter in Photoshop (or any other graphics program). After I am happy with the setting, I look at the 3-D comet structures at the terminus to see that they are not excessively enhanced.
The final image is better than the original, IMHO. Sometimes I have to trade-off the directly illuminated area from the tangentially illuminated areas to not over filter.

Anyway, rsvp if you have more questions or comments.
Best wishes,
Bill

Hi,
This shell is a Murex pectin. I only stacked 6 images in Helicon. That is all I needed due to its size and the depth of focus I used. I used f13, 1/10 sec per exposure, ISO 640 with my older camera, a D-90.

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Thanks.

Sorry...I haven't posted in awhile and thought I did. I checked store original but between previewing and sending, it got unchecked. I'll attach it to this note.

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