PSA: A guy at the Fort Worth star party told me to skip dark frames on my DSLR, and now I've got 3 hours of ruined data

Wesley Gonzalez · 2026-10-15T06:05:04.83794+00:00

I was shooting the Orion Nebula last Saturday at a dark site outside Fort Worth, and this guy with a modded Canon told me dark frames are a waste of time with modern sensors since you can just stack more lights instead. I believed him and skipped them. His logic sounded fine until I stacked my 240 lights with no darks, and the thermal noise banding is so bad the nebula looks like it's behind a dirty window. Now I'm driving back out there next new moon to redo the whole set, which is 3 hours of my life I won't get back. Does anyone here actually shoot without darks, or is that just a thing people say to save time?

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PSA: A guy at the Fort Worth star party told me to skip dark frames on my DSLR, and now I've got 3 hours of ruined data | Astronomy Photos - Guest Forum