A little question....Milky Way

[KHarmon]

I have been seeing some absolutely amazing pictures of the Milky Way recently and would love to try my hand at getting a picture of it. I would also like some advice on doing star trails so I guess this is probably a two part question.

I live in central Texas. I understand the need to get in an area as dark as possible before doing either a picture of the milky way or star trails. My questions are these;

1. Where in the sky can I view the Milky Way in my geographic location?

2. What is the best time of night to view it?

3. What recommended ISO, F-stop, and shutter speed should I use to attempt these pictures. At least a good starting point for the settings.

Question #3 applies to the star trails as well.

Thanks,

KHarmon

[The Blue Boy]

Kris,

This article should help with the first two. I'll let others chime in with the last as I've only ever had mediocre results.

[KHarmon]

Well....all of this might be a mute point from what I'm reading. The Canon I shoot don't quite have the ISO capacity that this guy is mentioning in his article. Might be one of those things that I just have to wait until i can afford to upgrade equipment.

KHarmon

[Donald]

Might be one of those things that I just have to wait until i can afford to upgrade equipment.

Not at all. This is a high-end pro talking about what he can do with the very, very best of equipment, But that doesn't mean that you can't produce high quality work. There are always perfectly acceptable work-arounds. The secret is in terms of nailing the exposure, so that you don't end up with lots and lots of noise. So, if you can't crank up your ISO to the sort of figures that he's talking about, then you're going to have to do more work with the other variables open to you; i.e. aperture and, more likely, shutter.

[FrankMi]

Hi Kris! I found Jim Richardson's article very interesting but I also noted that he was working under a very strict set of guidelines that you may or may not want to impose upon yourself.

"No layers in Photoshop. No multi-image, bracketed-exposure HDR computer magic. No telescope-mounted clock-driven hours-long exposure."

Donald has some excellent points and I'm sure that there are those in the forum that can provide additional details on how to go about achieving your goals if you can work around some of Jim's self-imposed limitations.

[The Blue Boy]

Guys,

The reason I put that article up was Jim Richardson talked about timing and the fact that to see (or record) the Milky Way, you have to have a really dark sky, good conditions and then to use in camera noise reduction. And he mentions some basic in camera settings to get good results. Equipment nowadays is irrelevant. Apart from a tripod.

[Jim B.]

This will help you with locating the Milky Way in your area. It's free.
http://stellarium.org/

[Markvetnz]

220 images f8.0 ISO1600 40second exposures. Stacked using Robert Brown's stackamatic script in CS5

here is a link to my website with a milky way image
http://photofinishnz.com/milky-way-over-mount-wakefiled
WB 3700k, iso 6400 11 seconds f4.0

The biggest problem with this type of photogrpahy is onviously noise and light pollution (aircraft/satellites etcZ

[Markvetnz]

Good starting point for star trails is f7.1 ISO200 4 minute exposures
always turn long exposure noise reduction off for star trails, but on for milky way shots
An excellent smartphone app is Google Skymaps - makes finding polaris or circumpolar stars simple.
I also use The Photographers Ephemeris to determine moon rise and set.
Google Scott Martin photography.
Also http://www.thenightskye.com/

[Momo]

One of my Flickr contacts, James Neeley, takes some wonderful Milky Way photos. Check out this link and see for yourself. You can read his EXIF information to see his settings and perhaps get a better idea as to how you might proceed with your own camera.

[drjuice]

You might want to take a look at George Lepp's column in outdoorphotographer.com/columns/tech-tips/ from the summer of 2011 (I think it was July or August). In any case, I found it very helpful when I started making star track pictures. I did mine at Badwater in Death Valley National Park which is about as dark as any place I can get to easily. And, as I recall, he has a specific question addressing the Milky Way. And, the picture Mark added to this thread follows the general recollections as I recall them for how to tackle the Milky Way.

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