Nick – It is definitely worth trying to get some photometry if you can. You could use Sloan r’ mags for your long-pass data and you would at least be able to see if you are consistent from night to night.
Paul – I’m pretty sure that the scatter is due to faint stars in the aperture since this is a very crowded field. I think it is far to early to say anything about the lightcurve of this object but the more observations the better. I have used DAOPHOT and it can be very good but I’ve not been able to get it to work reliably with moving objects.