Right time right place

mattyg · 8 Sep 2013 at 12:45

Spent a few days trying to get some star/milky way shots with my 12-24 f4 decided to have a go to see what my 50mm 1.8 was like and snapped this. SOOC so no PP

Which brings me onto how would I get the most out of this shot.
I've got a number of what I think are milky way shots but they need help

50mm/1.8 @15sec

092 by mpg Photo's, on Flickr

in contrast

12mm/f4 at 104 secs

DSC_2731 by mpg Photo's, on Flickr

mattyg · 8 Sep 2013 at 12:58

tomparker95 said:
That's pretty cool mate.

Cheers

An Exception said:
UFO?

Lol I wish

I didn't even see it. Saw a couple of flashes out of the corner of my eyes. But was actually looking at my feet during that shot. (was getting fed up with kicking the tripod...lol)

mattyg · 8 Sep 2013 at 14:13

Genoma said:
Are you using Lightroom? The picture looked interesting with a preset I created for star trails, happy to share it.

I have LR yes just as yet not really had the time to learn to use.

mattyg · 8 Sep 2013 at 15:52

D.P. said:
Eat helps these kinds of shots is having interesting foreground features , either as a silhouette against the night sky show what true darkness is, or partially illuminated. If nothing ese trees work. Star photos need more structure than just the stars most of the time.

Secondly, you need to be careful of exposure time if you don't use an automatic panning head. You e ond photo shows the lights as streaks and not points because the exposure as too long. Am for about 15 seconds like like first photo. Alternatively stack loads of photos VR several hours to get purposeful streaks.

My plan at the outset was to get a good milky way set then add some foreground interest in PP. However with the 50mm shot I was just trying to get the correct exposure etc to get the star shots, before moving onto setting up a real shot.

My 2nd shot was more to show the difference a faster lens makes.
50mm f1.8 vs 12mm f4.
I was amazed at how much more the 50mm showed

12mm f4 @15 secs

DSC_2725 by mpg Photo's, on Flickr

I tried a tree shot (I was in a field) but light pollution was an issue.

mattyg · 8 Sep 2013 at 16:42

Andy90 said:
Take a look at David Kinghams blog.

He gives some nice advice about taking star shots

http://www.davidkinghamphotography.com/blog/2013/3/ten-steps-to-photograph-the-milky-way

The following page on his blog also shows you how to calculate exposure time - the wider the angle of the lens, the longer you can keep the shutter open before stars start to leave a trail.

http://www.davidkinghamphotography.com/blog/2012/11/how-to-avoid-star-trails

Hope that helps.

Cheers I'll take a look

I did use the FF 600/focal length or Crop 400/focal length calculation

mattyg · 14 Sep 2013 at 01:15

Mr. Peri Peri said:
Check this site out for some good tutorials on processing and taking the shots.

http://www.davemorrowphotography.com/p/tutorial-shooting-night-sky.html

Also he does some LR presets you can buy for about $5 I think, probably well worth it!

Where did you shoot these from?

I have managed to capture the Milky Way once in the Lake District and am on a bit of a quest to find the right location / conditions to capture it from home (South East).

Shot was taken in a field at the back of a cottage we rented for a week in Quidenham, Norfolk

I was driving throughout the night and stopped a little north of lowestoft earlier that night and the view of the stars was amazing I'm sure I could see the milky way pretty clear with my naked eyes.

Shame I couldnt get back to that place that week before the cloud moved in