My neighbor said my galaxy shot was fake because her iPhone does better, and I can't stop thinking about it
I showed Linda from next door my Andromeda photo last Saturday, the one I shot over 4 nights from my driveway in Boise with a 6 hour total exposure. She looked at it for two seconds and said her phone takes better pics of the moon, so mine had to be edited or fake. I tried to explain stacking and why the camera sensor matters, but she just laughed and walked off. Now I'm second guessing whether I should even bother sharing my stuff with people outside the hobby. How do you all deal with folks who think astrophotography is just phone snapshots?
The thing that gets me about the Linda situation is that she probably meant it as a compliment in her own weird way, like she thinks phone cameras are so good now that anything better must be cheating. My aunt does the same thing with my sourdough, she swears the grocery store loaf is just as good because it looks the same on the outside. Some people only trust what they can hold in their hand and see in five seconds, and no amount of stacking talk will change that. What helped me was finding one or two people who actually ask questions instead of giving verdicts, and letting everyone else just see the pretty picture without the lecture. Save the long explanation for the folks who lean in, take this with a grain of salt since I still get annoyed about it sometimes.