That 'shoot in raw' advice from a forum guy ruined my first nebula

Some random on here told me to always shoot raw for deep sky, but I didn't understand I needed stacking software too... ended up with 200 useless files and a blank screen. Has anyone else wasted a night because of one-size-fits-all tips?

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ward.mason2mo ago

...and nobody ever mentions that raw files need debayering too, which is like the secret handshake of astrophotography. You can't just open a raw in a normal viewer and expect to see anything, especially not a faint nebula. I spent a solid hour thinking my camera was broken or I'd messed up the focus because all I got was this greenish-black grid of noise. The real kicker is even if you have stacking software, if you don't understand calibration frames - darks, flats, bias - your stack will still look like garbage. So you're not alone, that one-size-fits-all advice is basically a trap for beginners.

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victor_carter512mo ago

Secret handshake" is a bit dramatic, the debayering is literally step one in every guide I've ever seen.

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