[WingnutR32 (Sam)]

Thanks Rick,

In regards to, "The magnitude of the shot noise is determined by the square root of the number of photons detected and will be the same so long as the total exposure time is the same", I suppose I would have to agree as you lost me in to many big and complex words.

I suppose I was being to 'short and sweet' in my reply as this was the beginners section.. I say this very light heartedly as I am very much a beginner myself having only done a few short exposures myself so far and knowing very little.

I was more answering the question directly from the two examples the OP had given.

I would think that the best result will come from exposing the region in concern for a length of time that will fill up the wells without topping out and then repeat for as many times as you want to 'smooth' out the image (I am sure there would probably be a limit to the amount of stacks used, but I cannot answer that).

But the direct answer to the examples given would still be more detail in a longer exposure (assuming no stack) with lower signal to noise ratio (again, depending on hardware) and less detail and higher signal to noise ratio (smoothness) with shorter exposures with many stacks.

As Brendan said though, many long exposures = WIN!