That guy who said my stacked images looked like noise just saved me 6 months of bad processing

He pointed out I was pushing the exposure too hard on my Nikon D750 at a meetup in Phoenix. I dialed back the gain and started taking 3x more frames instead, and the difference in my nebula shots is insane. Anyone else had that one piece of advice that made you rethink your whole workflow?

2 comments

2 Comments

foster.ruby5d ago

That whole thing about 3x more frames is good advice but I'd actually say it depends a LOT on your sky conditions. I tried the same thing after a buddy in Tucson told me to take 4x the subs and I ended up with 8 hours of unusable data because the moon was nearly full and my light pollution from Phoenix was washing out everything. Dialing back the gain is solid but you gotta match your sub count to your Bortle zone and moon phase. Your D750 at ISO 800 with 60 second subs under dark skies will stack beautifully with 150 frames. But in a Bortle 6 zone with a waning gibbous you're better off with 200 frames at ISO 400 for 30 seconds each. The noise reduction comes from not clipping your background sky.

juliam405d ago

Oh man, that's a classic. I had someone tell me to stop trying to fix everything in post and actually get it right in camera. Cut my editing time by more than half and my stacks looked way cleaner.