jamie940•14d agoProlific Poster

I was stacking my Milky Way shots wrong for three years until a guy in Flagstaff pointed out my mistake

I was at a star party in Flagstaff last month and showed a guy my stacked image of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud. He asked me how many dark frames I used, and I said 'none, I just stack the lights.' He looked at me like I had two heads and said, 'You're just adding all that sensor noise on purpose.' I'd been doing it that way since I started, thinking more light frames was the only thing that mattered. Turns out, taking 20 proper dark frames that night cut the noise in my final stack by what felt like half. How many dark frames do you all usually take for a typical night shoot?

3 comments

3 Comments

knight.felix13d agoMost Upvoted

Wait, you guys are counting your dark frames? I just point the lens cap at the sky and hit the button until my coffee gets cold. Seriously though, after reading what @patricia_gonzalez said, I guess my "sweet spot" of five or six is probably why my stars still look a bit gritty. I need to stop being lazy and just take the thirty.

patricia_gonzalez14d ago

Feel your pain, I once tried to skip flats by using a t-shirt as a diffuser. Usually grab around 30 darks, seems to be the sweet spot for killing that noise without wasting too much time.

holly_reed5514d ago

That "sweet spot" you mentioned, @patricia_gonzalez, it's everywhere once you start looking. It's like finding just the right number of coffee beans so it's strong but not bitter. We're all just trying to get the good result without the extra work, right? Your t-shirt diffuser story is the perfect example of that hustle. Sometimes the simple fix works, other times you learn you just gotta take the thirty dark frames.