astrophotographic landscapes of the Milky Way
plan ahead
if your aim is to get the most aesthetic imagery of the Milky Way, you need to not only have a clear sky with no moonlight or light pollution, but you need the Milky Way (in particular, the area around Sagittarius) to be in the part of the sky you will be shooting
in the Southern Hemisphere, you will find it best with the Southern Cross at around the 5 o'clock position in the sky (the Southern Cross circles around the South Celestial Pole in the sky each day - for example, just before dawn in the Australian winter when it will be near the south-west horizon and you can place the Southern Cross in the far left of your scene assuming you will be doing a panoramic stitch of the arching Milky Way
Sony a7S II full frame mirrorless camera firmware update 2.10 and
Sony a7R II full frame mirrorless camera firmware update 3.30 in Aug 2016 has introduced a bug that “eats” stars in RAW and JPG astrophoto images when exposure time is 4 secs or longer, or BULB - these cameras are no longer suitable for astrophotography! However, a workaround is to use Continuous burst mode which unfortunately will reduce dynamic range as it uses 12bit not 14 bit sensor readout
1)
Bad spatial filtering isn’t new to Sony’s Alpha cameras. Even with the older firmware, all recent Sony alpha mirrorless cameras including the a6000, a6300, a6500, a7S, a7R, a7, a7II, a7sii, a7rii exhibit the “Star Eater” issue when using the Bulb exposure mode - in these cameras, use timed exposures not BULB!
the hand held option
what you need
Nice pano stitch of 10 images at f/2.8, ISO 3200, 15sec, but the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 lens is showing awful image quality at the tops of each frame - lens choice is critical!
camera settings
manual white balance:
manual exposure for the Milky Way:
many aim for an exposure value of -8EV for the Milky Way = 25sec, ISO 3200, f/2 to 2.8
shutter speed:
to avoid noticeable star trailing, exposure length should be kept below 400/(effective full frame focal length), however, even at this shutter speed, you will get star trails on large prints from high resolution digital sensors so you may prefer to use a shorter exposure by 5-10secs, or, as calculated by this complicated NPF rule formula
8):
(35 x aperture + 30 x pixel pitch) ÷ focal length in mm = shutter speed in seconds
aperture = f/ratio eg. 1.4
Pixel pitch = the camera sensor’s physical width in millimeters ÷ number of pixels in width x 1000 to measure it in microns
thus for:
preferably should look overly bright in camera (neutral or ETTR histogram) without blown highlights
to get the whole view of the Milky Way, you will need about 14 vertical images stitched if using a 14mm lens (on a 35mm full frame camera)
landscape exposures (moonless sky):
20min, ISO 1600 at f/2.8 (may need a warmer on the lens to prevent dew forming)
5min, ISO 1600 at f/2.8
1-10min, ISO 400-1600 at f/8 with light painting of foreground - may need multiple shots with different focus points
RAW mode
long exposure NR ON or AUTO
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post-processing