Rant: That 'stacked' Milky Way shot I posted last week? Wrong.

Had a conversation with a guy at a photo meetup in Denver who saw my image and asked why my star trails looked jagged. He pointed out I was stacking 30 second sub exposures without any dithering between frames. I had been doing it this way for 2 years and never realized the noise pattern was just piling up. Has anyone else had a basic technique like that totally missed by them for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

wadejenkins22d agoTop Commenter

Ngl, I actually disagree with dithering every single sub. "What does your tracking setup look like" is the real question here because if your mount is rock solid and you're doing short exposures like 30 seconds, dithering every frame just eats up time and you barely see the benefit. I'd rather spend that shutter time collecting more data than babysitting tiny noise patterns that stacking and calibration frames can handle anyway.

ray61322d ago

Did he also mention what dithering interval works best? I keep hearing every 4-6 frames for most mounts but some people swear by dithering every sub if you're going after really faint stuff. What does your tracking setup look like?

waderamirez22d ago

Wait, did you ever check out the Cloudy Nights thread about this? I remember reading this one guy's breakdown where he tested dithering every sub vs every 4 frames on a decent mount with 30 second subs and the difference was basically invisible unless you zoomed in 400%. He said the real issue is people not taking enough calibration frames or having bad tracking in the first place. For real, if your polar alignment is off by even a tiny bit, dithering is just putting lipstick on a pig. I've been shooting for about 3 years now and I just do every 3rd sub. Saves time and the noise pattern is always gone after stacking with good darks and flats.