A method for improving Milky Way exposures in light pollution
&gt; <i>Shouldn’t the image taken at ISO 6400 show more noise than the image taken at ISO 1600? If the exposures were the same brightness, yes. But these images were not taken with the same exposure. The first image started with twice as much shutter open time (30 seconds versus 15 seconds) and two stops more gain on the sensor (ISO 6400 vs ISO 1600). The result is that the first image has significantly more light data. This makes the final signal-to-noise ratio of the processed images higher on the first image. The higher the signal to noise ratio, the less noisy the resulting photo. So in this case it was actually better to overexpose and compensate later in post processing, despite the initial unprocessed images appearing unusable.</i><p>This is really neat. I&#x27;ve got a full frame camera with a sensor that has very good dynamic range and I&#x27;d learned to under-expose and then pull detail from the shadows in post processing as information can&#x27;t be saved from blown highlights. This sort of flips that on its head, except the featured overexposed shot didn&#x27;t have blown highlights, it just looked like it did. Instead it had a wealth of low-light data.