7 Tips for Better MILKY WAY Photography

it is march which means it is the beginning of milky way core season and that word core is really important and i'm going to talk about that more in today's video i'm sure many of you are buzzing to photograph the heart of the milky way galaxy so i thought i'd share a video with seven tips for better milky way photographs i'm going to start with a cold hard truth seek darker skies if you really want better milky way photographs you need to find the darkest skies you can possibly find no light pollution filter is going to help you there's no post-processing trickery that's going to unveil the milky way from behind luminous fog of light pollution the best thing you can do is use the resources on international dark sky association to start a campaign against light pollution in your local area contact your local mp and help to educate others about the issue of light pollution but for now you need to get as far away from light pollution as you possibly can so check our website like like pollutionmap.info and find the darkest skies near to you but also consider the direction you're going to be facing so for example in the uk and most of the northern hemisphere for that matter the milky way core arches pretty low across the southern horizon so when i'm looking for a location i want to make sure that there's no towns or cities to the south of my location and this is why south facing coasts are really good because you're looking out to sea and there's no big towns or big cities and you normally get pretty dark skies now once you've found some dark skies it's important to do some daytime scouting because you're looking for an interesting photograph to take you're not going to be able to find it in the dark so go to your location in the daytime try and find an interesting subject or a way that you can capture something unique about the landscape that you're in i like to take test shots with my smartphone and i'll add any interesting compositions or points to google my maps and i'll add some notes about the direction the composition is facing perhaps what i'd like to feature in the night sky with that composition as well but daytime scouting is super important for your safety as well because you never know what dangers are waiting for you in the dark there might be a big hole in the ground or some dangerous terrain or a big cliff edge it's really important to go and check out the landscape in the daytime before you go out in the dark tip number three is to use a fast lens so a lens with a really wide aperture so normally for milky way i recommend at least f 2.8 if you can get a lens that opens up to f 1.8 or f 1.4 that's going to be even better because more light is going to be allowed to pass through the bigger opening inside the lens the more light you collect the less noise there's going to be in the image the brighter the milky way is going to be and the more detail it's going to have now lenses that open up to f 1.4 or f 1.8 are going to be prime lenses so fixed focal length lenses you can't zoom with these lenses they're just one focal length so make sure you pick the focal length wisely now me personally i love the 24 millimeter focal length i like doing panoramas with the 24 millimeter lens but if you're a beginner or i don't know some of you out there will just prefer the wider field of view of a 20 millimeter lens or a 14 millimeter lens instead tip number four it's not all about the core and i promise you i didn't plan for that to rhyme it's just the way it worked out but if you look for milky way photography tips online you'll come across a term milky way season and most of them say that it spans from march to september and that kind of makes a lot of beginners believe that you can only photograph the milky way between march and september which is not true you can see some part of the milky way all year round so when you see this milky way season they're only referring to the core of the milky way which is the very central bulge of the spiral galaxy which we call home but the core is a very small part of the milky way band that we can see in the night sky there are many other regions of the milky way that are just as interesting to photograph and certainly deserve a lot more attention than they get there's the bright fuzzy cygnus region which i absolutely love is a beautiful jewel encrusted region of the milky way that spans from the crooks constellation to the carina constellation there's a really nice faint section of the milky way that runs through the winter circle asterism of bright stars in the winter sky i made an entire video about all the other sections of the milky way other than the galactic core and where to find them and when is the best time to photograph them so be sure to check out that video after this video if you're enjoying the free educational astrophotography content make sure to hit subscribe down below and hit a like to let me know that you're enjoying this video but speaking of educational content i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's video skillshare skillshare is an online learning community for creatives who want to follow their curiosity and learn new skills there's even a number of astrophotography classes available too so sticking with the theme of milky way photography you should really check out ian norman's class on nightscapes landscape astrophotography it covers the gear you need exposing for the milky way and processing your images as well i recently completed marquez brownlee's youtube success class and picked up so many tips that i'm applying to my own youtube channel to hopefully improve the quality of these videos if you'd like to give skillshare a try they're giving away a one month free trial to the first 1000 people that click the link in the video description down below you get full premium access to all of the courses you could try as many as you like in that month so what are you waiting for hit that link in the video description down below tip number five is to use a star tracker now if you're not using a star tracker your exposure times are going to be limited by the star trailing limit so because earth is rotating if you expose for too long the stars appear to move and they will trail in your images but we want the stars to look nice and round and pinpoint like we see with the naked eye so with a 14 millimeter lens on a full frame camera you'll be limited to like 25 seconds or if you're using a high megapixel camera you may see star trading at 20 seconds or maybe even 15 seconds even so using a star tracker will allow you to take exposures of the night sky of multiple minutes and that allows you to lower your iso and you're collecting more light in each exposure so as you collect more light you have less noise visible in your images and it means you're going to have a lot more detail the milky way is going to be a lot brighter and the image quality is just incredible the other amazing benefit to a star tracker is that it allows you to use longer focal length lenses with things like the milky way so for example a 50 millimeter lens on a full frame camera you'd normally be limited to like 10 seconds before you can see the stars trailing but with a star tracker you can do one minute or maybe two minutes maybe even three minute exposures with a 50 millimeter lens you just get insane detail in the milky way and especially if you create a panorama of these tracked images you really get just amazing detail in the milky way and of course the longer focal length of a lens you use the better detail you're going to have in your images you should go and check out my other video where i photographed the milky way above stonehenge using an 85 millimeter lens and the resulting detail you get in the milky way and the foreground is just absolutely incredible maybe i should make a video about printing that image would you guys be interested to learn about printing astrophotos maybe i think that'll be a good video let me know in the comments down below if you don't have a star tracker and you're a bit unsure about making that investment just yet you could try a different technique called stacking to help remove the noise from your images so in stacking you take multiple exposures of the exact same scene same composition and you create an average of them and because the noise is randomly distributed between each image when you make an average of all these images the noise gets removed and the scene which was the same in each image starts to shine through so all you have to do is compose your image dial in your settings so f2 20 seconds iso 3200 and then capture multiple consecutive images how many images do you capture well i recommend at least six and probably no more than 16 but if it's your first time trying stacking do 25 images and then you can do stacking with six images or nine images or 16 images 25 do some little experiments and find out what is the optimum amount of images for your camera and lens because at some point adding extra images just doesn't help get rid of much more noise so it's good to find the optimum amount for your camera and lens now the big issue with stacking images straight out of camera is that the stars are going to move between each image so rather than doing the stacking yourself you can use specialist software so for example if you're using a windows computer you can download sequidor and it's a free to use software and it does the stacking for you it'll stack the foreground it'll stack the sky separately and blend them back together it does all the hard work for you it's completely free it's amazing if you have a mac computer then you can try starry landscape stacker which does come at a small fee it's about 35 pound at the time of making this video but it does the same thing stacks the foreground and sky separately blends them back together for you and you have an image without much noise now of course if you have a star tracker you can combine this tip with the previous tip and you can stack tracked exposures and that will get you the best image quality in astrophotography hands down like seriously try it you'll be absolutely amazed and finally tip number seven stop shining your head torches at it because you're not gonna make the milky way brighter by shining a torch at it i mean look we've all been there myself included i've done it taking a shot looking at the milky way with a big beam coming out of the the head torch but it just doesn't make sense you've spent all that time getting away from light pollution to see the milky way in its full glory and then you just shine a big beam of light and i'm sure there's plenty of people starting out in this genre of photography and might think it it looks cool but it just doesn't make sense like if you're gonna use light in the foreground in some way just think about how it can either add to the image or help to tell a story so for example one of my favorite photographers who uses a light in the foreground is michael goff down in australia he uses more of an omnidirectional light source and holds it really high in the image and created this series where you kind of feel like this guy is you know exploring these other worldly landscapes with his magical light and he picks landscapes where the light plays with the foreground very well and casts like really cool interesting shadows and helps to illuminate the the interesting things in the foreground another photographer i feel who uses light in the foreground really well is adam schnabelson so he's got this almost trademark lantern now which he uses to illuminate the foreground so you can see a bit more detail in the foreground but also to illuminate himself usually sitting in the foreground and his images are otherwise very cool and blue some of them are often taken in snow but having this warm orange light just makes the image just so much more inviting and warm and friendly and you kind of just makes you want to be that person sitting in the foreground in this warm light and enjoying the peaceful serenes of starlit landscapes that he captures so the color of the light can also add to the story it can add something to the image so think about that as well so i hope you've enjoyed today's video guys i hope you picked up some tips if you have any tips of your own please get in the comments down below and start the conversation with this amazing community that has decided to follow me and this channel if you haven't already check out my video about milky way season maybe check out my video about photographing the milky way above stonehenge if you haven't hit subscribe already come and join the community what are you waiting for and if you're going out to enjoy the night sky anytime soon i wish you good luck and clear skies

Channel: Alyn Wallace

Views: 78,555

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Id: ejd1K8lTEWw

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 06 2022