First Night Sky Photograph

I just got the Canon 7D Mark II and read all up about astrophotography over the internet. This was (and still is) my first attempt. Please critique! Where I live the only dark sky nearby is the yellow zone. Shot at F3.5, ISO 1600 for 20 seconds on the 15-85 canon lens.

I like it. What software do you have for post processing? A few minutes in NIK Vivesa2 can bring out what you captured.

Looks great for a first attempt, right direction, time, exposure. You haven't gone crazy on the saturation (personal preference). It feels a bit tight though, like you need a slightly wider lens to get some of the interesting foreground and more of the sky in the same shot.

Can't do much about the city lights unfortunately, I'll spam what I usually do when it comes to light pollution: The International Dark-Sky Association https://www.darksky.or​g/ is trying to cut light pollution around the world, some US cities (albeit smaller ones) have done a lot to make the stars more visible at night. Even if you can't help or contribute, just knowing about it and maybe sharing it in the future could help more places become star-friendly.

Thanks for the encouragement! Using LR 5.7 - NIK Vivesa2 does look cool, is it hard to learn?

Agree re the angle and how it's kind of tight. I shot that at 16MM for a 25.6 equivalent.

I am considering purchasing the Samyang F2 16MM lens however now I am not sure. Could it be the angle or location? - I was in a clearing in a forest and shot in an upward direction trying to get over the trees yet leave just the tops of the trees visible.

There is a road nearby and of the thirty exposures I took, around half were ruined by cars driving by, the rest had airplane trails. This was one of the only clean ones.

NIK is normally used as a plugin for other programs (such as Lightroom) but modules can be used stand-alone. Viveza 2 is used for corrects/modification based on a selected color and adjustable circular area.

I took liberty to download the POTN image in your post and spent about 5 minutes to see what I could do. PM me and I'll send it to you. I'm sure there is a lot more that could be done to your image with other post processing applications and with Viveza.

The Astronomy & Celestial forum is very helpful.

gewb wrote in post #18929497
NIK is normally used as a plugin for other programs (such as Lightroom) but modules can be used stand-alone. Viveza 2 is used for corrects/modification based on a selected color and adjustable circular area.

I took liberty to download the POTN image in your post and spent about 5 minutes to see what I could do. PM me and I'll send it to you. I'm sure there is a lot more that could be done to your image with other post processing applications and with Viveza.

The Astronomy & Celestial forum is very helpful.

I am very grateful to you for working on, and editing these Milky Way pictures. Here they are - hoping you can share with all here your methodology for how you processed these. What an amazing job, wow! Really special.

Thank you

For the second pic in your post #6, I copied your JPG (post #1) and imported into Lightroom 6. I used LR6 as a host to launch NIK Viveza 2. In Viveza I added around 8 or 9 control points then returned to and exported from LR6.

For the first pic in post #6, I used your RAW file, imported into LR6 and made a few very basic adjustments, then sent the TIFF into NIK Dfine2. There I made fairly gentle noise reduction and returned to LR6.

Using LR6 as a host, I sent the TIFF to Viveza 2 where I added 13 Control Points. Prior to export I made a few Global adjustments then sent it back to LR6 for export as a JPG.

awardticket wrote in post #18929424
Thanks for the encouragement! Using LR 5.7 - NIK Vivesa2 does look cool, is it hard to learn?

Agree re the angle and how it's kind of tight. I shot that at 16MM for a 25.6 equivalent.

I am considering purchasing the Samyang F2 16MM lens however now I am not sure. Could it be the angle or location? - I was in a clearing in a forest and shot in an upward direction trying to get over the trees yet leave just the tops of the trees visible.

There is a road nearby and of the thirty exposures I took, around half were ruined by cars driving by, the rest had airplane trails. This was one of the only clean ones.

I like the first try. Have you thought about something like a Rokinon 10mm f/2.8? The 16 you mention will allow more light to the sensor, but won’t change the framing you have here. Going wider will allow more flexibility to get some foreground elements in while also having a lot is starry sky in your frame. Keep at it, the Astro stuff is a lot of fun.

ct1co2 wrote in post #18929937
I like the first try. Have you thought about something like a Rokinon 10mm f/2.8? The 16 you mention will allow more light to the sensor, but won’t change the framing you have here. Going wider will allow more flexibility to get some foreground elements in while also having a lot is starry sky in your frame. Keep at it, the Astro stuff is a lot of fun.

Tnx for the encouragement and for the idea to buy the Rokninon 10MM F2.8. I went ahead and ordered it and it just arrived today! Of course I couldn't wait to get out and try it out. It was fun playing with the manual aperture and focus.

What do you all think of the results? I don't love my editing job however I don't know how to do advanced stuff past my version of Lightroom.

Sweet Pic! Love the transition from light to dark!

A nice image and the colours work well

Very nice. If you want to "expand" the capabilities of LR, find and install the free version of the NIK plugins (new version is pay). Then play with the Vivesa 2 plugin.

So haven caught the night sky bug here, I took a looong detour when I was in SFO to take a crack at the dark skies in Yosemite and Death Valley. Here is what I came up with.

Nice composition. I wish I could get a frame like this from my garden.

Unfortunately so much light pollution.

yours look better than my first attempt, I need more practice and experience with the post processing. really nice job