Video stacking

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AstroEd

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I come to DSLR/wildlife photography from Astrophotography (Most solar imaging) and the technique is to capture 1-2 thousand frames of video and import to a software named registax which then sorts the frames from best to worst based on your settings, you can then tell it to save the best 10% frames and it will then stack those frames while auto aligning each frame and the final image is clearer less noise than the sum of the whole video.

I was wondering if there was a way to do this in wildliife photograpy/video and would it have a similar effect like reducing noise and such?
Examples of my basic Solar process.
Single frame
single-frame.jpg
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Multiple frames stacked
stacked.jpg
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Processed and colorized
stacked-color.jpg
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Avid astrophotographer (both deepsky and solar) here as well.

As you already pointed out, the reason we do this in astro is to improve the signal to noise ratio as much as we can (looking through a lot of atmosphere + very long exposures make this a necessity).

In theory, you could apply this to wildlife as well. The thing is however, that the subject would have to be perfectly still for the entire duration of the capture (which just doesn't happen in reality). On top of that, you're generally shooting from such a close distance (compared to astro) and low noise levels to begin with; that there isn't much to gain.
 
Avid astrophotographer (both deepsky and solar) here as well.

As you already pointed out, the reason we do this in astro is to improve the signal to noise ratio as much as we can (looking through a lot of atmosphere + very long exposures make this a necessity).

In theory, you could apply this to wildlife as well. The thing is however, that the subject would have to be perfectly still for the entire duration of the capture (which just doesn't happen in reality). On top of that, you're generally shooting from such a close distance (compared to astro) and low noise levels to begin with; that there isn't much to gain.
That occurred to me after I posted this :-(
 
Image averaging is an established technique to reduce noise. Photoshop automates it somewhat. I think they say every doubling of the number of shots reduces noise by one stop. In theory you could shoot the stacked background seperately and composite it with the subject. I dont know anyone that uses or recommends this thougn.

 
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I was wondering if there was a way to do this in wildliife photograpy/video and would it have a similar effect like reducing noise and such?
In addition to the comments above, remember why image stacking improves S/N, you're basically integrating the image capture over a longer total time period. IOW, integrating more incoming light over time. When light is so low that your image capture time is already pretty much maxed out to the point that longer exposures would run into other problems either from tracking errors or from sensor/electronics noise that we get with overly long exposures it makes sense to take multiple images and stack them in post processing.

But for most wildlife subjects, even when shooting in twilight conditions if they're still enough (e.g. a roosting owl) we generally have the option of just using a slower shutter speed if we want to integrate light over a longer time frame. IOW, we're generally not working with so little light that we can't just shoot a longer exposure which is the easiest way to integrate more light. Sure taking the example above of a very still owl not just at twilight but well after dark it could be possible to end up in a nighttime shooting scenario where we're already shooting very long exposures at high ISO and in some rare cases like that there's nothing wrong with trying an image stack to improve S/N, as long as the subject stays still across the frames it should work fine.

For relatively still wildlife subjects you can also focus stack. For instance with two Owls that aren't perched at the same distance from you and when shooting with a very long lens (e.g. 600mm, 800mm) you can run into situations where there's not enough Depth of Field to keep both birds sharp even when stopping the lens way down. Multiple shots focus stacked can allow you to keep eyes in both birds crisp and sharp. I shot a focus stack sequence just like that earlier this spring. Shooting a 600mm lens plus 1.4x TC (840mm) I couldn't hold both owls sharp even at f/22 and when I stopped down that far I lost the background blur and the distant trees became a tangled mess. So I shot two images, one focused on each owl and focus stacked them to create this image.

Z62_5933--20210514-Edit-2.jpg
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Point is that you can use multiple image techniques with certain very still wildlife and there's nothing stopping you from stacking for S/N reasons but unless you're already shooting very slow shutter speeds it's often easier just to keep your shutter open longer if you want to capture more light. I suppose in some unique situations like a lot of wind blowing so that it's hard to keep a big wildlife lens steady even on a solid tripod then maybe a series of faster shutter speed images stacked might be an answer to minimize camera shake but still integrate a lot of light. Just thinking out loud here :)
 
Thank you all for the answers, I realize that my many post in these forums are wide and varied a totally unconnected, but sadly with my memory issues I tend to post questions as soon as they hit me even just passing thought in fear of forgetting them. I will try to back off on my silly questions.
 
Thank you all for the answers, I realize that my many post in these forums are wide and varied a totally unconnected, but sadly with my memory issues I tend to post questions as soon as they hit me even just passing thought in fear of forgetting them. I will try to back off on my silly questions.
I didn't think it was a silly question....it was good, made me think and brought forth some great responses!
Cheers,
Alex
 
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