After more than 5 months of gearing up to do DSLR photometry and two AAVSO CHOICE courses later, I submitted my first DSLR photometry observation yesterday: R Car, magnitude 5.054 with an error of 0.025.
With a visual observation, the best I could have said that it was magnitude 5.1 with an error of a tenth of a magnitude. With DSLR photometry I can get down to a hundredth of a magnitude. A CCD could do better (a thousandth) but for ten times the cost, or more.
Yet another step in the evolution of my hobby. Thanks to Mark Blackford for sharing his considerable experience.