I used to delete my bad astro shots, then I saw what a guy in Tucson did with 200 rejected frames
For 3 years I deleted every astro photo that had star trails or clouds in it, and I shoot maybe 50 frames a night so that was a lot of tossing. Last month at a star party near Joshua Tree, a guy named Dale showed me his laptop and he had stacked 200 shots that he called garbage, stuff with planes and satellites and blur. He ran them through software and the final picture of the Orion Nebula was better than anything I ever got with my clean shots. He said the random junk actually helps cancel out noise, and I just stood there feeling dumb. I tried it two weeks ago with 80 frames from my own trash folder and the result wasn't perfect but it showed way more color than my old best. So now I keep everything, even the duds, because apparently garbage in the right pile turns into something. Has anyone else stopped deleting their bad frames, or am I the last one to figure this out?