Stacked vs single exposure for nebula shots, I'm team stacked now

I spent last month photographing the Orion Nebula with my old DSLR, first trying a single 30 second exposure at ISO 3200. The core blew out and the outer dust was just noise, looked like a fuzzy orange blob. Then I took 40 frames at 15 seconds each and stacked them in DeepSkyStacker, same camera and lens setup. The difference was ridiculous, you could actually see the dark lanes and the color gradient. I know some folks argue single long exposures are more honest to what's up there, but for detail it's no contest. Am I missing something, or is stacking just the obvious way to go for anyone without a fancy equatorial mount?

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kai5642mo ago

It reminds me of how people edit photos on their phones now. Nobody posts the raw shot anymore, they run it through a dozen filters and tweak the lighting until it looks like a painting. Same thing with stacking, you're not seeing what's actually up there, you're seeing a math average of what was up there. But honestly, that math average is closer to reality than one noisy frame ever will be. I think the single exposure purists forget that our eyes do the same thing when we stare at something dim, your brain basically stacks frames over time to pull out detail. So yeah, stacking is just the smarter way to see.

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