Milky way attempt

[Ben Egbert]

Jim tried to teach me how to shoot a MW, and I tried, but I had a slow lens and a very noisy camera so I am not sure this is something I will be able to do without some gear change.

The last night at Skyline, after Jim had gone home I had enough moonlight to do a single shot. This is as follows.

5DSR
24mm F4
ISO 5000
20 seconds

I though I saw a MW on the LCD, but it was mostly clouds and the MW does not show up well here.

Like your thoughts. I will show one from another night with a better MW, but crap foreground.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ben, I will look closer at this when I get back home. But for a first glance I like what I see here. I personally like Peek-a-boo Milky Ways. So that’s fine looking in my book.

How did you deal with the noise in this? Did you stack like Kyle described in his Tutorial?

As far as the gear goes, the right gear defintely makes processing the Milky Way much easier. Though with stacking most any camera/lens can be used, but it’s so much easier with the right gear which will capture more light and also process better. I know I wouldn’t trade my D850/Sigma 14mm combo for anything.

But shooting at night will be a learning curve, it’s kind of the fun to see and struggle a bit at first and then to see how with each succeeding trip the process gets more natural and more easy.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim. there was too much cloud movement for stacking, also lots of light pollution from both cars and aircraft. I just used Topaz denoise and choose a setting I liked. I used and on line tutorial for the rest of it, mostly WB exposure and how to set sliders.

 

[AlanLichty]

Still a very viewable result in spite of the clouds and camera noise. The clouds do add a level of interest for these skies. Are those the lights of Hanksville on the right hand side?

 

[Ben Egbert]

Still a very viewable result in spite of the clouds and camera noise. The clouds do add a level of interest for these skies. Are those the lights of Hanksville on the right hand side?

Yes, those and others I cloned out are from Hanksville. Not an ideal place for MW shots. I think Cathedral Valley overlook would be better.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ben, looking at this from home now. I think the valley and ground layer is too dark still. Did you use a layer mask and process the sky separate from the ground?

The sky looks great, but is too blue for me. What I look at in the sky to try and determine it's white balance is are the stars still white? There are different colored stars when you zoom in close, but there are neutral colored stars that should be white. So as I cool down my WB (which I always do) I stop when the stars start turning blue, then I know I have gone too far. Now, I will say that is perhaps just me being picky because lot's of people process the sky with the stars turning blue just like you did. So you can decide how you want that to look like, since I might be in the minority there.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim, I read a tutorial that probably liked blue. I will give your suggestion a try.

Meanwhile, here is one shot the second night with your and a darker moon and fewer clouds.

24mm F2.8
Iso6400
20 Seconds.

This is one of the shots where I also did one with a 5 min low iso foreground exposure that I have not bothered to process. It looks as bad on my monitor as it did on the LCD

 

[JimFox]

I probably need to stop and write up how I process my Milky Way shots sometime.

In this one there is lot's of magenta I would pull back on the magenta. Adjusting the Magenta is tricky. You need to adjust it to get the blue to be the right color, but you also don't want to add so much that the sky or MW starts to turn purple.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim, I played with the white balance and thought the stars were white, but maybe not. I just realized, I need to read Kyles tutorial too.

 

[JimFox]

Thanks Jim, I played with the white balance and thought the stars were white, but maybe not. I just realized, I need to read Kyles tutorial too.

You had crazy noise in your images. The noise I saw on that LCD display of yours was the worst noise I have ever seen at night. Maybe someone else who has a 5DSR can offer a suggestion?

 

[Jameel Hyder]

I have shot MW with my 5DsR with good results. I keep the ISO to 3200 and use a faster lens - my favorite is the 24/1.4 Rokinon. I have also used the 14/2.8 as well with good results. The key is to get the exposure right. If you have push an ISO 3200 even one stop, the noise gets bad.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Jameel is right, I do ISO3200 with good results, but never for 5 minutes. I think it needed long exposure NR turned on. Jim, that was the very first time I ever used Bulb on any camera, so I had no idea how to invoke long exposure NR.