TIL that stacking multiple filters on a telescope photo is not always better

I was at a local star party last summer and this older guy with a beat-up scope showed me his shot of Orion Nebula with zero filters - just raw frames stacked. He said everyone obsesses over H-alpha and OIII filters but a straight RGB capture can look just as clean. Anyone else think the filter hype is overblown for amateurs?

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riley_schmidt9h ago

Hang on, are we really acting like a single shot from a backyard scope is gonna hang with a properly filtered narrowband image? I mean, sure, that guy's raw stack probably looked decent on his phone screen, but you can't compare that to the detail you pull out of a nebulae with a good H-alpha filter. It's like saying you don't need a tripod for long exposures because you can just hold it really still. The hype exists for a reason, even if some people go overboard. Is the bar for "good enough" just way lower now than it used to be?