Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Planning is fundamental in many types of photography, and it plays a key role when you want to photograph the Milky Way.
To the contrary of what many people think, our galaxy is visible throughout the year, but the most interesting area to shoot, the galactic center, is only visible for a few months depending on your location.
To help you plan your Milky Way images, every year I create some calendars where you can quickly see the best days to photograph the Milky Way in your location.
Google introduced the astrophotography mode in its Pixel 4 phone launched last year. The same feature was added to Pixel 5 and 4a a year later. However, Google has quietly removed the feature from these phones’ ultra-wide camera. No one knows why, but the assumption is that it just performed poorly.
Photographing the Milky Way (and the night skies in general) is exciting and opens up a whole new world. But it’s also pretty tricky if you’re new to it. If you’d like to do it and you don’t know where to start, Steve Kazemir has just the video for you. He goes through all the basics of photographing the Milky Way, both for creating single images and a timelapse. So if you want to start somewhere, start by watching his video below.
We reviewed the Samyang 18mm FE in February, but that was too late for the milky way season. From the middle of August, it is sufficiently dark in southern parts of Norway to shoot the stars. We have a rather modest window every month where the moon doesn’t wash out the stars. During that time we need to get lucky with clouds.
I have been out with the Samyang 18mm FE for three evenings this fall. The small and lightweight lens hasn’t disappointed. On the contrary.
The Samyang is sharp wide open, vignetting is well controlled and the stars look very decent at close inspection. Let’s have a closer look at a few images; please remember that high iso is not optimal for details and sharpness. All images below were shot with the Sony a7r III.
Milky Way is such an inspiring subject for everyone who enjoys shooting the night sky. Travel photography blog Capture the Atlas has published their annual selection of the best 25 Milky Way images. And oh boy, are they inspiring! We bring you some of them below, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy them just like I did.
In this article, I will share how I shot a Milky Way panorama, and how I later stitched the images in Lightroom. But, first some background.
Last summer we spent our vacation in Tuscany, Italy. Spending almost a week on a wine farm in Italy didn’t create any standing ovations initially. Then it struck me that the Milky Way season had just started in southern Europe. Once this was established, I started envisioning how cool it would be to shoot the Milky Way core, and perhaps even a few panoramas. My only concern was light pollution. Would it be possible to capture what I envisioned at the location we stayed at, or would I have to spend hours in a car to find a decent spot?
It turned out that this small wine farm where we stayed, just outside Castellina in Chianti, was perfect. On our second evening, I headed out when it was dark enough for night photography.
For several years I have believed that shooting with a medium format camera at high iso would yield a terrible result. I have thought that there is likely no point in even trying because the image will be ruined because of noise. However, this fall I brought my Pentax 645Z and the Pentax 25mm f4 out into the darkness where the zombies reign.
From the middle of August, it is dark enough for night photography here in the southern parts of Norway. The milky way season lasts to approximately December this far north. I try to head out as often as I can when there is no moon and the forecast predicts a clear sky.
It is always a delight to see the milky way in-camera, but bringing it out in post can often be challenging. One of the key challenges is that the night sky requires quite a different approach than the ground.
When it is very dark I prefer to shoot a few extra very long exposures for the ground to make sure I have enough shadow detail to work with.
Telescope manufacturer Celestron has produced a calendar you can download for free. It covers the most important celestial events in 2020. The calendar even comes with a Deep Sky Checklist.
A growing number of photographers are discovering the joys of night photography, thanks to Instagram and the much-improved camera sensors. To stand under a clear starry sky is utterly magical. I so vividly well remember the first time I captured the milky way. To see it in-camera made a massive impression on me. I was hooked.
Milky Way photography is one of the most fascinating types of photography, but to shoot the most appealing part of our galaxy, the Milky Way center, you need to plan your shot since it’s not always visible.
The galactic center is only visible during a specific season (March to September in the Northern Hemisphere and February to October in the Southern Hemisphere), and also, just for a few hours during the night.
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