I spent two nights at Alabama Hills last week. This is my first time out with the astrotrac. I was trying to figure out what the optimum settings for the milky way without having too much noise in the images. I am getting closer but need more field time with the gear.
This is a blend of two exposures, one for the foreground and another for the sky.
Harsha
Looks great. I got the polarie recently but haven't had a chance to test it. Would be interested in learning what settings you've tried and the results. From what I've heard, the best results are from taking multiple exposures and stacking them with dark slides. I've also seen that their are some really funky things astrophotographers will do like taking some pics with high iso and some with low.
Also, did you have any issues blending the two exposures? Or is it just simple layer masks...?
Now that looks very cool! Good work with your Astro-trac. The wb of the foreground is a bit different being so cyan cast, but it really works for me. Good job.
Looks nice! However the scene and Milky Way needs a lot more warmth. I feel it is too blue in color. I usually use the kelvin white balance when I photograph the Milky Way, usually between 3850k to 4100k depending on the light pollution and sky glow.
The two shot composite works well here, I have only done one ground/sky composite with my D800e and the astrotrac and it was a photo of the milky way over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. I hope to get out and shoot more Milky Way soon, I like the photo....well done.
jeremy raffer wrote:
Looks great. I got the polarie recently but haven't had a chance to test it. Would be interested in learning what settings you've tried and the results. From what I've heard, the best results are from taking multiple exposures and stacking them with dark slides. I've also seen that their are some really funky things astrophotographers will do like taking some pics with high iso and some with low.
Also, did you have any issues blending the two exposures? Or is it just simple layer masks...?
Thanks Jeremy.
I started with rather conservative settings. My initial settings were ISO 640, F5.6 and exposure of 140 seconds. I got much better milky way shots with F2.8, ISO 800 and exposure time of 140 seconds.
What strikes me the most is the relatively lack of noise. I did not do any noise reduction for the sky in the image above. My ISO 6400 images before the tracker had good details but lots of noise. They were only good for smaller prints ( at least for my taste).
The problem with multiple exposures and stacking is the foreground. It is very time consuming to stack when the foreground is moving(tracked image)
I usually take two images. One for the sky and another for the foreground without tracking but using the same settings. This way my sky in the foreground image has the same tonality of the tracked image sky. This makes the blending much easier.
I did a very simple mask to blend the two images.
harsha
