Hi to everyone I'am a hobbies photographer that loves landscape, milky way photos, and night time photography... I the las past years I decide to focus on trying to capture a great milky way photo that I could print and put on my wall. I go to a remote area and capture a series of photos. But when I get back home I download all my photos and see that for getting the look on the milky way I have to use high ISO. When I normally on landscape keep my ISO on 100 so I don't use the noise reduction sliders on lightroom. But when I get to this Images I try to reduce the noise but it seems that I always get the images to soft before reducing the noise.
My question is what I can do to make those great Images of the night sky that are sharps and almost we not noise reduction.
Any tips, programs I can use to get rid of the noise? process on photoshop? Any tutorial?
Any tip you can tell me it would be a great help.
I was looking for Stopper tutorial but its seem the night sky tutorial would be release last month of 2015 I can way until that so any idea where I can get better skills
Here I upload a photo stray out of camera.
Nikon D7000 22MM ISO 8000 f/6.3 Nikkor 18-105mm Kit lens.
Do it at your lens' biggest aperture (f/6.3) then you can lower your ISO to about 3200 or even 1600. Also, shoot at Manual mode, you can try 20-30sec shutter speed, and try using Shade mode for your white balance (this you can skip if you're shooting RAW). And are you using apps to know the exact location of the Milky Way at a given point in time? I believe if you're in the southern hemisphere, Milky Way will not be visible until late October.
For that focal lens I use the biggest aperture (f/6.3) the lowest ISO to get must of the image was 4000. I shot all manual. and use the rule of 500 to take the shutter speed to the lowest possible before having some trails. I shot raw. I use star walk apps to find the milky way. In these photo I was looking for the milky way but it was behind my subject and I can't take the shot on the side. I on the north hemisphere almost near the Ecuadorian line. In a small country of Central America(Honduras)
This Is another photo from the same day but on the side where I spot the milky way
I got some great milky way pics using a wide angle lens set to the lowest aperture. [The one i had was a f2.6] While you want to go high aperture on landscape and distance shots the night sky, while a vast landscape so to say, is littered with the tiny stars which is what you want to focus on. You want to be able to bring in every bit of light you can as sharp as possible.
I also turned off my auto focus and manually set mine to infinity. You can use live view on your camera and manual focus in on a bright star or even the moon zoomed all the way in. Then once you get it clear leave it there and zoom back out and set up for your shot.
You would also need to think about the 500 or 600 rule. Basically, to determine the optical length of exposure, we take 500 / 600 and divide it by the focal length of the lens to get the optimal shutter speed. So if you are shooting with a 24mm lens, you take 500 and divide it by 24, which is 21 – that’s the longest shutter speed you should use before those stars start changing into trails. If you use the less strict / less conservative “600 Rule”, you end up with a 25 second exposure. So an exposure between 21 and 25 seconds should work best for a 24mm lens.
If you have say a 14mm wider angle lens you can go into bulb mode and use say a 30 sec exposure but you would def need a hand trigger to use to make sure the camera stays perfectly still. Obviously a higher focal lemma of say 50mm would drop the time downwards to 10 sec.
I hope that helps and happy hunting. I just usually start screwing around with whatever lemma i have until i get what I'm looking for. That is half the fun!
Also you can get most of the milky way before fall and winter after midnight or 1am in the states by looking south coming up from the horizon.
Thnx Michael Kendrick. Yes when I go to that place I try to find the milky way using star walk app. Then use manual focus to try to focus infinity. I use the rule of 500 to try to get the lowest speed before getting trails. I don't have any wide angles. The only wide angle I have now is the kit lens I think I should get a better lens. Any lens recommendation on the budget? New or old version?
Thnx Jerry Friedman for all the tips.. First I should say great photos :D...
Now I see that I should buy a wide angle lens to get more of the night sky. To get aperture from 1.4-2.8 to reduce higher ISO.
You mention to scout weather, location, direction, season of the year. Do you know where can I find the best season of the year to get the milky way? I'am from a little country call(Honduras) on Central America.
I shoot RAW and I use the 500 rules because gives me some extra security. I shoot manual, and VR turn off. I would look for hyperfocal because when I'am on site a forget about this but I would consider these for the next shot.
Great photos. I don't know if you are a nikon shooter but any recommendation for lens? that they are on the budget. Some new models o used models, off brand something that I can buy for beginning.
I make a bracket exposure and add a flash to the three I get five exposure this is the 0+EV. Yes I would correct the WB to a more blue tone. When I see the picture I see that I get a lot of light pollution even when I get away from that city, and the lights were cover by mountains. I should get more away from that city. Thnx for the tips. I just get some videos for post-processing so I would try to learn and try to get something more interest out of it.
If your cam handles ISO well, then boost it... 2500-3200 depending on how dark it is. and shoot wide open, 2.8 or wider. Experiment.