Sam wrote:
hardware binning method depends on sensor, different sensor use different way
and one thing clear is that software binning is the best way to improve SNR
SNR is the most important part when you do binning
so don't judge by just brightness
I've been thinking about it... But there's still something nagging me.
Let's see if I got everything clear, first: on hardware binning increases brightness by adding pixel values, while software binning does an average, therefore brightness remains the same, but SNR increases.
With hardware binning you get more noise, alright, but with the reduced exposed time, you can then shot a much greater number of frames, to help improve SNR.
With software binning you would then require less shots to have the same image quality. But since brightness is unchanged, you would then require a longer exposure. With filters, you would roughly need 3 times the exposure of the L channel.
This, in theory, is not a bad thing: you just do longer exposures, but with the need of stacking much less frames, given the improvement in the SNR. But longer exposures also means having a much greater "risk" factor: tracking errors, satellites or airplanes in the field, cosmic rays, etc.
In my specific case, I don't have an autoguiding setup, just a Star Adventurer and a DSLR lens, so the longer exposure is much less attractive to me than the additive binning.
Did I mistake something?
Thanks
