I used to think stacking 50 frames was the only way to get a good deep sky shot

Someone on here told me my Orion Nebula photo looked 'overcooked' and had lost all the faint outer gas. They said I was stacking too many frames and killing the natural gradients. I cut back to just 15 of my best frames from that night, taken with my Redcat 51. The result had way more depth and a softer look, even with less total light. Now I pick quality over quantity every time. Has anyone else found that less stacking can actually give you a better final image?

2 comments

2 Comments

evan_morgan812d ago

Read a piece by an astrophotographer who argued stacking too many frames acts like a high pass filter, just averaging out the faintest signal until it's gone. He showed math where adding mediocre frames actually increases the noise floor faster than the signal after a certain point. Makes sense now why my old 100-frame stacks looked flat and plasticky.

eva_lewis2d ago

Yeah that tracks with what I've seen. There's definitely a sweet spot before you start killing the faint details. I'd rather have a sharper stack of 30 good frames than a muddy mess of 100.