Greetings to all Fstoppers! I hope this post will be interesting to those interested in pushing the limits of smaller sensor cameras. In this case...handheld night imaging with a micro 4/3 camera!
A few days ago I was lucky enough for PetaPixel to do a feature on an image of mine - a handheld shot of the Milky Way from a single 10 second exposure with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 MkII micro 4/3 camera. I wondered how I could potentially improve on the quality of such an image - but still keep the camera (with Olympus 8mm f/1.8 fisheye lens) handheld, not leaning on anything for support.
Here's what I figured. If I could keep the image sharp(ish) at 10 seconds exposure some of the time, surely I could keep the image sharp at just 5 seconds exposure almost all of the time. And, if I took (say) 10 such exposures, one after the other, I could stack them to improve the signal to noise ratio, even if I had to bump the ISO to say 3200 given each was only a 5 second exposure.
Well, it worked (all 10 exposures were sharp)! I took my E-M1 MkII camera out on a rather calm evening this week, above Breaker Bay in Wellington, New Zealand, and caught the arc of the bay and the sweep of the star lanes in this image - handheld - that still manages to capture the wonderful hues of the water in Breaker Bay. This is a stack of 10 5-second images, each with the Olympus 8mm f/1.8 fisheye lens at f/1.8, ISO 3200. And when you stack 10 images, the noise in the final image is reduced very significantly compared with a single image...
I plan to print the resulting image 16"x20" to see what the print quality is like. I think it should be pretty nice. <Update: I've done the print now and while it may not be the sharpest/cleanest night image I've ever done, it's much better than I would have expected and is perfectly workable. I can post a crop from the print if anyone is interested>.
I hope you enjoy this image from my experimentation! Sure, for most night imaging I'll still use a tripod - but it's nice to know I still have very workable options should I be out with the camera and without the tripod :)
Jonathan
