I believe hardware binning has its advantages on extremely faint objects because I have seen it done practically in narrowband test shots (oiii on the helix). The improvement was just second to none. The signal (and contrast in details) was just overwhelming any noise.
If you're in a light polluted environment or imaging a very bright object then hardware binning has very diminished returns. The data will saturate very quickly and the skyglow will also be worse.
So hardware binning does definitely have its place. As far as software binning goes, I hear what you're saying Ivo but I'm still to see a real life example of the kind of improvement you'd get. Are you saying that if you remove skyglow first then software bin the data the result would be better?
I can provide some light polluted uncalibrated raw data if you wish to demonstrate. Got stacks of that.
