I finally got a chance to get out at night for some astrophotography. This is only my 3rd time shooting milky way. Last time I did that I had a Canon t5i so I was amazed by the quality improvement.
Shot with Sony a7rII.
21mm f2.8 20sec ISO 6400
Milky Way in Southern California
I'm confused on all these different formulas for capturing the MW is it a style or a technical choice for the settings. my understanding is that a lower iso gives you better clarity and higher iso gets grainy and I'm assuming that the lower the iso the longer the capture and some have sid that shooting at f8 is the way to go. with so many theories going around is there an end all be all perfect setup? BTW great shot!!
For MW you want a fast lens. I'd say f2.8 is minimum to get a good shot. The wider your aperture the lower your ISO will be, although you don't really need a lot of dynamic range for astrophotography so high ISO doesn't affect it as much. You definitely don't want to shoot MW at f8 unless you have a star tracker but even then I don't see the point of that.
To lower the noise you can stack multiple shots with a median filter in PS or use a program like deep sky stacker.
There's also "500 rule" used to calculate correct shutter speed to avoid star trails. 500 Divided By the Focal Length of Your Lens = The Longest Exposure (in Seconds) Before Stars Start to “Trail”.
Basically if you have a wide and fast lens you can get a great shot of the Milky Way. Just shoot wide open, keep your ISO at 3200-6400 and your shutter speed at 10-20 seconds, depending on the focal length, and make sure to check the moon calendar and shoot on the night when there's no moon out.
damn thats a ton of good info. thank you for the mini lesson I'm thinking my lens doesnt go that low i believe 3.5 but i will check into that i am currently looking for new lenses to get better performance i just have to save my pennies the one i keep coming across is $1800.00 so i have to make due for now. i will try this technique and get back to you thanks again greatly appreciated!!!
You're welcome! Look up the lonely speck blog online. It has a ton of info about that.
Also look into Rokinon lenses. They're relatively cheap but most of them are fast and offer good quality.
i know people use different lens manufacturers all the time like rokinon, sigma tamron. do they produce as good a quality image or are the differences negligible to the eye or is it just a cost standpoint?
In my experience the Rokinon lenses I've had have been good. Some of them might be a bit soft wide open but still good overall. They're cheap because they're manual lenses with no AF. As long as you shoot in a dark location and nail your focus your results should be good with most lenses.
Hi Rus, you can try Stacking your images to get much better result. This one ia excellent, it just can be great!
Thanks! Yeah I wish I had done it but unfortunately it was getting very windy at the location and I had to leave sooner than I thought. Next time I will definitely do that.
Rus has given good information here and I ditto it. When I do milky way I use the fastest lens possible. The rokinon lens 2.8 that I have is excellent, as well as my Tamron. The aperture in the start point for me. Then I usually set iso to 3200, and use a shutter at 20 seconds and check to see how this comes out by zooming in. Remember to use manual focus and no image stablization. The adjustments from I use from then on are adjustments to iso, and then if still not good enough shutter. Be careful the longer the shutter and more that you will catch movements in the stars as the earth rotates. However, the wider the lens the more you can get away with. The most challenging is focus and getting a good foreground. On your shot, you might have come back so that the rocks on the right are in focus, or move so that they are not in your shot - this is where the creativeness comes in. It is basically the same as if you were taking a daytime shot (and it is hard to keep this is mind). To focus, ignore the shooting settings, go to the highest possible iso, use liveview so that you can set your focus, then return to shooting settings. Alternatively stay on shooting settings and either shine a light on the rocks, or put a light on the rocks. Remember though you have tto be back a bit to get everything in focus. Yes, I have the mw bug, it is addictive.
Good info Lorretta! Thanks for your feedback. I couldn't move farther back because it was near a small cliff and there was also a bush right behind me. I took a few shots but I like this one the most because of the rocks in the foreground and I think if the rocks were too bright they would've distracted from the Milky Way. I definitely want to go back again while the Milky Way is still visible.
Have you heard of focus stacking. In this situation, you would focus on the rocks right in front, focus on the middle rocks, and then of course infinity for the sky. In ps, you would layers all three and brush out what's not in focus.
Yes I have. I guess I should've done that but didn't really think of it.