In addition to Sequator, use StarNet++ to remove the star field so that you can process the Milky Way's nebulousity without making the stars huge and blown out.Ĥ. So, I often expose the foreground to keep the trees out of the image while making sure the Milky Way is where it's supposed to be.Ĥ. I also found that the moon can be a little too directional sometimes.) I also expose the foreground separately because I often have trees in my images. (Moon lit nights work too if there's no water. I expose for the foreground separately, often taking the image at dusk because I find it hard to see what I'm doing. No rule seems to emerge in my limited experience.)ģ. Sometimes the "dark" exposures cause haloing. Sometimes they create weird chromatic aberrations that turn stars into "raccoon eyes". Sometimes more "light" exposures help, sometimes they lead to more star trailing when using Sequator. I take about 10-12 "light" exposures and 5-8 "dark" (You have to experiment. (The exposure length is what PhotoPills advises me to do.)Ģ. I use 8 second exposures at ISO 3600 for the Milky Way. I have a similar kit to what you have: Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z 20mm 1.8 lens. I'm impressed that you did that with a single exposure. It only takes a couple of minutes to shoot some simple dark frames and then you can decide later whether it's worth the effort to incorporate them into the final stack but personally I rarely do that anymore. It can be noticeable especially if your sensor has noticeable hot pixels but I haven't found it all that necessary for Milky Way shots as compared to things like deep space imaging where a single speckle of color can be very out of place. and gone through the process of using them in the final stacked image. Similarly I tend to intentionally frame a bit wide, especially if you'll stack frames, to make sure you've captured enough even after any layer alignment and cropping of the final image. Sure most modern cameras are ISO invariant across a large range and you could also brighten them in post with roughly the same results but it's hard to compose and frame at night so shooting close to the correct exposure in the field lets you quickly check captured images to make sure it's pretty much what you wanted to capture. One approach that Hudson uses for a shot like yours it to take a landscape shot of the foreground in the "Blue hour" and stack on an astro image in PS as a sky replacement.Ĭlick to expand.Personally I try to shoot close to the correct exposure in the field. Various trackers for use taking Milky Way and other astro shots - this is a good article on when and how to use trackers For a 20 mm lens on a full frame body this rule will give 25-30 seconds maximum exposure time." - BUT the resolution of the sensor also matters - when shooting "for example" a 45.7mp sensor -vs- a 24mp sensor - I would reduce the exposure to half of this time PER Exposure - and this is the point why one takes multiple shots to "build" the exposure you need to be ideal and YES use stacking software to blend them together.Īs in most photography it is better to have a sharp movement free image (or stack of such images that you combine later) that is underexposed rather than expose "correctly" and have movement blur (unless of course trails are what you are seeking). According to this rule the maximum exposure time that will not show star trails is calculated by dividing 500 (respectively 600) by the focal length of the objective. An empirical rule for estimating the exposure time is the so called "500 Rule" (500 / (Crop-Factor x Focal Length) = Ideal Shutter Speed) (sometimes "600 Rule"). The maximum exposure time depends on the focal length of the objective and the distance of the object from the northern star. Generally when considering astro - I wonder what is the correct exposure - I do not accept that the best results can be obtained by "correctly exposing a single image unless one is using a tracking mount (like the Move Shoot Move star tracker kit B Hudson uses) - my research identified: untracked_astrophotography - "Without mechanical tracking star trails can only be avoided by limiting the exposure time. I find Hudson Henry's work and guidance on YouTube and his own site on these types of shot very informative. I am interested to see how this thread develops - I have been observing the threads in DPR - and hope that this community also develops an interest in Astrophotography.
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