Told a stranger my favorite nebula shot, got a rant about phone photos
So I was at the Griffith Park star party last Saturday, showing a guy my M42 stack on my DSLR. He glanced at it for two seconds and said "you know my phone can get that with a 10 second exposure, right?" I laughed it off but honestly it bugged me all night. I spent like 3 hours tracking, stacking 200 frames, and doing color calibration to get the dust lanes right. His phone shot would be a smudge with halo artifacts. But part of me wonders if we're gatekeeping too hard. Maybe the point is just getting people outside looking up, even if their image is crap. Has anyone else had someone dismiss their work like that, and did you change your mind about the phone-only crowd?
Man, that sucks, three hours of stacking deserves way more than a two second glance. Phone astro is fine for getting people hooked, but acting like it's the same thing is just wrong.