Next generation light sources are revolutionizing x-ray science by delivering ultra-intense, hard x-ray pulses many orders of magnitude brighter and shorter in duration than previously achievable. Maximizing the scientific potential of these light sources requires the development of suitable detectors. Experiments such as coherent x-ray imaging of single particles require detectors that can record extremely high instantaneous flux rates produced by femtosecond x-ray pulses (i.e. thousands of photons incident on a single pixel of an area detector in a few femtoseconds) while also being able to accurately distinguish single photon events so that many thousands of frames of data can be used to reconstruct extremely low flux information (e.g. less than 1/1000 photons per pixel per frame). This paper presents data from an integrating pixel array detector (PAD) possessing the ability to record high- and low-flux x-ray data at an X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL). Methods are presented to process extremely low-flux data (less than 1/10000 8-keV x-rays per pixel per frame) to accurately recover diffraction patterns from thousands of frames. The data were collected using a detector developed by Cornell for the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC National Lab. A copy of this detector was delivered to SLAC in the middle of 2008. The ASIC developed for this detector was used by SLAC as the basis for the CS-PAD (Cornell SLAC-PAD) being used on the Coherent X-ray Imaging beamline at the LCLS. These methods extend beyond XFEL applications because they allow for the suppression of dark accumulation noise which typically limits the low-flux capability of integrating detectors on conventional x-ray sources. © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.