Milky Way pictures turning out poor. Advice please

I've tried and tried to get this right but I just can't seem to do it. It could be there is too much light pollution where I'm at or I just stink at this but whether I'm stacking or doing a single exposure it just doesn't seem to come out very well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

This is a single exposure that I've done some post processing on.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/67761159@N02/7​298827774/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/67761159@N02/7​298827512/

Start with location. Go to:

http://cleardarksky.co​m/csk/

Look up your shooting location. Best to be in a blue, gray or black area.

Next, check the star charts to see the best time to see the part of the Milky Way you want to shoot. I use the Stellarium program - looks like July and August will be best for what I will shoot.

Meanwhile, search this sub-forum as there is a lot of good info here!

Regards,
GEWB

Yeah I've done that. I'm in the blue range and I have Stellarium. While I admit I'm not shooting the best part of the milky way in that picture I'm still shooting the milky way. My aim isn't my problem. The best part is towards a town and the picture gets really polluted when I shoot that way.

What are the settings, etc that you've used to get each of those shots. It's pretty hard to make suggestions from what you've provided.

Gee can't you guys just read my mind? haha

ok top pic was F/5.6, 30 second exposure, ISO 3200, 18mm

second one was 10 stacked images that were F 1.8, 50mm, ISO 1600 4 dark frames

gewb wrote in post #14503318
Start with location. Go to:

http://cleardarksky.co​m/csk/

Thank you, I found a reporting site close to me. I'll try it out early tomorrow morning to see how close their prediction is.

Just as a starting point for the first one, you're best to start with the lens wide open and then stop down, only if you have a reason to do so. ie. distortion at the edges. Trying to find a sweet spot for the lens is fine if you're doing normal photography (eg 1/500 shutter) but with astro stuff, throwing another stop or two into a 30 second exposure brings other problems into play.

This is what I would do in Photoshop for a quick look at what you've got with your stack. If the file is 32bit, do a straight conversion to 16bit. Crop away that black border from the stack alignment.
Levels so that the histogram just touches at either end. The important bit is a non-linear stretch in curves by grabbing the curve and moving the control point to something like Input=57, Output=120. It's not so much the numbers but the shape of the curve. It's important that the curve doesn't flatten out at the top (clipping). Repeat both the levels and the non-linear curve steps. You may need to do a color balancing step and then try the levels and curves again.
Try the same approach with your first shot and see what you come up with.

IMADreamer wrote in post #14503041
I've tried and tried to get this right but I just can't seem to do it. It could be there is too much light pollution where I'm at or I just stink at this but whether I'm stacking or doing a single exposure it just doesn't seem to come out very well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I feel your pain. We're both at about the same place. I think that your second image has some hidden stuff in it. I'm having some real problems with PP in DSS, some guys know how to work it, but I don't. Initially I got no where with Canons DPP but I think that I may be making some in-roads into it. Regardless of what others may say I don't think that there is anything intuitive about DPP. I'm a little leery about posting my attempts at the MilkWay.

Tim