Arch Rock Milky Way

As I mentioned in my Wildflower post I went out to Joshua Tree with the intent to shoot the Milky Way at Arch Rock with the Wildflowers being a little bonus. This one is from the new Sony A6400 and an even newer Samyang 12mm f2.0 that I picked up so that I could use the Sony as an emergency night time camera.

The Samyang 12mm f2.0 looks pretty sharp, my first copy was decentered, so I sent it back and got a 2nd copy which looked evenly sharp. With the Sony A6400 being a crop sensor the 12mm Samyang ends up being an 18mm Full Frame equivalent. Definitely not as wide as I am used to, and in this one the left side of the arch got cut off in order to get the Milky Way core. As Kyle would know that left side being cut off bothers me, but since this was really just a test shot, I take a deep breath and live with it.

First off, my conclusion is that the Sony A6400 with that Samyang 12mm f2.0 makes for a very formidable night shot setup. Other then a little WB tweak to the sky and some added contrast, this is just about the same as it was shot.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

I like the shot and the description of the setup helps keep it in perspective. I wish there was more of the scene to the left of where this one cuts off. I would not want to see that at the expense of where you framed this on the right. If this were my only camera/lens I would be inclined to change my point of view to match the subject. This feels like a shot using the Sony from the tripod spot where you shot your N850 images.

Very nice Jim, you have the MW down pat.

Nice Jim! That's quite good for a cropped sensor. The bright star in Sagittarius looks like a proper star, and if this is uncropped, the head of Scorpio in the upper right looks pretty good for coma. I guess you'll have to stick to your 14mm Sigma on your Nikon if you want the whole arch

Tim

AlanLichty said:

I like the shot and the description of the setup helps keep it in perspective. I wish there was more of the scene to the left of where this one cuts off. I would not want to see that at the expense of where you framed this on the right. If this were my only camera/lens I would be inclined to change my point of view to match the subject. This feels like a shot using the Sony from the tripod spot where you shot your N850 images.

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I made a new friend that night and they set up next to my D850. This was actually taken about 8 feet to the right. If I had shot it from my spot, it probably wouldn’t have gotten the arch cut off.

My new friend had a lot of questions with shooting the Milky Way, so in all I actually only took 7 shots of the MW in total with the Sony. Which was okay, as my main goal was to just be able to test it out. She had set up right next to where I had my D850 so I was able to help her while still getting shots in with the D850.

Timmeh said:

Nice Jim! That's quite good for a cropped sensor. The bright star in Sagittarius looks like a proper star, and if this is uncropped, the head of Scorpio in the upper right looks pretty good for coma. I guess you'll have to stick to your 14mm Sigma on your Nikon if you want the whole arch

Tim

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Thanks Tim. Yeah I think this the best looking cropped sensor/lens combo I have personally used.

As I explained to Alan, I made a new friend there that took some of my time, so I didn’t spend hardly any time setting up the Sony. My D850 was setup with the Sigma 14mm, so I did shoot a full complement on it while doing an impromptu Milky Way workshop with my new friend.

I have a shot pano from the D850 that shows the MW in its entirety over the arch that looks pretty cool too.


Oh, and I will add this shot had the ambient light of the just setting moon to light up the arch. Although we did set up a low level light source later, this one is just lit by the set moon. It’s one shot, the ground layer was then increased by 1 stop from the sky, and the sky had just some contrast added to it to darken the background sky.

This is great.