Image Processing

Binning image data, and why you should do it.How losing some resolution in your images can help you capture more detail.

- Sara Wager

Binning is the process of combining the pixels of a camera sensor together to make ‘super pixels’, with the effect of increasing the camera’s sensitivity at the cost of image resolution. By increasing sensor sensitivity, you acquire deeper data in a shorter time than you would without binning. And, as we’ll find out, matching image resolution to sky conditions can be a benefit in itself. Binning sounds complex,but is quite straightforward.Imagine your camera sensor as a grid of individual pixels; when you take a photograph, the camera reads every pixel in the grid separately, generating an image with a 1:1 signal to noise ratio – this is technically 1x1 binning.With 2x2 binning, the camera will read each block of four pixels as one, resulting in a higher ratio of signal to noise and a lower resolution.