![]() ![]() You may have to weigh your tripod down to make it more stable. Use a solid tripod to make sure the camera doesn’t move or vibrate in the wind. If you’re using a DSLR with an exposure delay mode, use it to prevent the vibration caused by mirror slap.Images should be saved in RAW format for maximum post-processing control and the greatest dynamic range.Note that the infinity marks on most contemporary lenses are not accurate so I either use magnified live view manual focusing or autofocus on one of the brightest stars and then disable autofocus if the camera and lens combo can do it. Set the white balance to 3600K, although it will be likely be modified during post-processing. ![]() Each full f-stop decrease will halve the exposure time, and every full f-stop increase will double the time needed for the same exposure. Note that an f/2.8 lens (faster) will gather the same amount of light in 20 seconds, and an f/4.0 lens (slower) will gather in 40 seconds. Smaller sensor cameras will use an even smaller value to divide into. For my needs, a “300 Rule” is more applicable to the D800. However, because of my camera’s high resolution, I found that even 20 seconds showed some star trailing, albeit what I consider to be acceptable. 500 divided by my focal length of 14mm = 35 seconds. The “500 Rule” is often used to determine the number of seconds you can expose without seeing any star trailing as a result of the Earth’s rotation on a full-frame camera.Newer cameras may be able to use higher ISO values with less noise. 3200 ISO is a good compromise of exposure time versus digital noise on my D800.Turn off lens vignetting and distortion corrections as they can hurt stacking quality.Turn off long exposure noise reduction, or each capture will be twice as long while your camera creates a second, equally long “dark” exposure to subtract noise.The Photoshop image stacking operation will do a much better job. Set the camera to “M” manual mode to specifically adjust aperture and exposure time.However, great images can still be made using “slower” kit lenses on entry-level or consumer DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The basic techniques should work with any camera that you can control the settings below. A faster lens is better as it lets in more light over the same exposure time. Equipment and Captureįor the above image, I used a Nikon D800 camera, Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, Gitzo tripod with Ball Head, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. For contrast, this image was taken in a Bortal Class 2. My location for this image was a Bortal Class 4. See this informative post on the Bortal Scale and the impact of light pollution on astrophotography at NightSkyPix. The Bortal Scale was created to measures the darkness of the sky. The quality of the results will be limited in urban areas. It’s important (if at all possible) to capture the images from a location with minimal light pollution, which is, sadly, increasingly hard to find. In contrast to my homemade pinhole camera solargraphs, featured here in an earlier post, the above photograph of the Milky Way was taken from the same geographic location using decent photo equipment and completed to the best of my technical abilities at the time. Milky Way 1, Ontario, Canada, August 3, 2014 It’s as unfathomable and humbling as it is beautiful. It’s estimated that the observable universe contains two trillion galaxies and is, hypothetically, one of an infinite number of universes ( multiverse). The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy approximately 120,000 light-years in diameter and containing about 200 billion stars, of which our sun is one. This is a relatively simple astrophotography tutorial that will help you create stunning photographs of the Milky Way galaxy using your current photo equipment and image stacking. ![]()
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