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Why does nobody talk about how bad most astrophotography phone apps are?
I finally broke down and bought a real camera for night sky shots after three years of trying every phone app under the sun. Last month I was out near the Blue Ridge Parkway with my buddy who has a proper rig, and I had my phone on a tripod running a 30 second exposure app. His shot of the Andromeda Galaxy had detail you could actually see. Mine looked like a fuzzy blue smudge with a star barely visible. I tried stacking software on the phone too, but the noise reduction just wiped out any real data. The difference was night and day, literally. Has anyone else had that moment where they realized phone cameras just can't cut it for deep sky objects?
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hayden_rivera1mo ago
Yeah, phone sensors just physically can't capture enough light.
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blair6261mo ago
Wait, 30 seconds of ISO 12800 just to get a barely usable shot of the moon? That sounds like a nightmare. I mean, I knew phone sensors were small, but I didn't realize they were that tiny and starved for light. It's wild that we're okay with that level of noise just to get a picture. So basically, unless you're standing still for half a minute and the moon is perfectly framed, you're stuck with a blurry blob. I guess that's why real cameras still exist, huh?
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