A night out in Joshua Tree National Park. I have come to a point in which I want the cleanest image possible when shooting Milky Way landscapes. A single image just is not noiseless enough for me when printing large. I now track and stack 10+ sky images and combine them with a sunrise or sunset blue hour image for a virtually noise free image. This works out wonderfully when printing larger than 18 inches on the long end. I always combine night skies with foregrounds from the same outing, and never do I put the MW in a foreground orientation that doesn't make sense.
Fuji X-T2
Sky = 15 images track/stack with Rokinon 21mm
Ground = single image with Fuji 10-24.
All post done in Photoshop.
Hello Ryan. Nice work. Very clean and beautifull low noise result.
Also I increasingly have this approach, and one of the biggest challenges for me in this type of photos is to achieve a clean image with a low noise level. My workflow has also been adapted and I came to the same conclusion: tracking + stacking to the sky, and whenever possible and the composition is worth, a single exposure of the foreground in golden or blue hour.
I am currently trying to improve the techniques that are involved in this workflow, especially which have better results in conjunction with post processing, and I still have some doubts
You say you always put the Milky Way in the same position and frame, but that doesnt mean you have to leave the camera and the tripod in the exact same position all the way, right? Do you shoot in different moments and positions, and then use, for example, the auto-align in photoshop for a better possible result?