Question about why everyone stacks their star photos wrong

I keep seeing these astro photos where people stack like 200 frames but the stars still come out blurry and trailing. I think the problem is they aren't checking their individual frames before stacking. Last week I shot the Orion Nebula in my backyard with a basic DSLR and a tripod, and out of 150 frames I had maybe 40 good ones. The rest had tiny movements from wind or me bumping the camera. I tossed those bad frames and my final stack came out way sharper. Am I missing something here or do people just get lazy with pre-selection? Has anyone else noticed this with their own stacked photos?

3 comments

3 Comments

wren23020d ago

Out of 150 frames I had maybe 40 good ones" - sounds like you're being generous, I'd probably toss half of those too. Better to stack 40 sharp shots than 150 blurry messes, but hey, some folks just love their digital noise.

corah7520d ago

Yeah, same here. I trashed over 100 frames from my last set for being slightly off.

hannah_wells19d ago

Honestly, were those like motion blur issues or did you mean slightly off in focus? Because I've definitely tossed stuff for focus being a tiny bit soft, but I wonder if I'm being too picky sometimes. Ngl, it's tough to know when to call it quits on a frame and when to just work with what you got in post.