1st Attempt At Milky Way

From Big Cypress National Preserve. Heavy LR adjustments (mainly experimenting). All C + C much appreciated. Thanks!

Good work Spooky! I see that you are using a 24-70mm and a full frame. I went to Big Bend a few months back and one of the things that I wish that I had done more of was taking longer exposures so that I could harvest the foreground in photoshop. In other words use your rule of 500/600 for the MW/Starfield, but take a longer exposure from the same vantage to get more detail in the foreground. I am an amature so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I just know that when I go back I will make sure that I have good foreground images to work into the final image.

Keep up the good work!

Chris

Hey Kags, thanks for your suggestion! I do regret not taking a separate long exposure for the foreground (or even a regular exposure during daylight which I could have done). Alternatively, I probably could have began with a brighter exposure and then dailed back shadows for sky. Next time I will likely bump the ISO higher than 4000.

I am going to continue to mess with the shots because I am pretty sure I can still recover a lot of the foreground with LR (which I'm still learning as I go).

Anyway, thanks again! Here's one more without any foreground at a slightly longer focal length. I like the processing better on this one than the previous 2. Still a work in progress though.

One more from this set with different LR adjustments. I think these adjustments are an improvement (as it pertains to the MW; not really concerned with noise in the cloud).

The foreground is a bit dark (good points already suggested about taking a second (longer) exposure just for the foreground and composite the sky back on in Photoshop) but the adjustments on the sky look great!

I do notice some elongation of the stars near the corners. That's likely to be lens artifacts from shooting at wide-open. I've got a lens (or two) that does the same thing, but I use a tracking head and stop it down to eliminate the artifacts. Based on the exposure duration I don't think that's star trailing caused by Earth's rotation.

Thanks T! I ignored the foreground for this one trying to get the sky to my taste. The first 3 were based upon a tutorial and an article I read. The most recent was just playing with the sliders. At some point I will go back and try local adjustments to brighten the foreground on 1 and 2 and apply the presets on the most recent shot to the sky.

The 24-70 I used is not terribly good in the corners, especially at the wider FL.

I'm going to try stacking the next time I go out. If I ever got serious I would invest in a tracker. Some of the shots I've seen using those are incredible!

Thanks again,

Josh

Amazing images. You get much more colour from the stars than I have ever managed.

Cut down the saturation. Just my opinion.

Thanks Drlane. I'm new at processing the night sky so it helps to know if anything is overcooked. I suspect your critique is due to the stars being too blue? I'll slide it down and see how it looks.

Thanks again!

spooky action wrote in post #18112870
Thanks Drlane. I'm new at processing the night sky so it helps to know if anything is overcooked. I suspect your critique is due to the stars being too blue? I'll slide it down and see how it looks.

Thanks again!

Yes

no prob, if you are going for the arty look, but if you are really trying to capture the sky as realistically as possible
go easy on the processing

Dave

spooky action wrote in post #18112870
Thanks Drlane. I'm new at processing the night sky so it helps to know if anything is overcooked. I suspect your critique is due to the stars being too blue? I'll slide it down and see how it looks.

Thanks again!

That's caused by chromatic aberration, not saturation, I personally don't think it's over saturated at all. Saturn and Mars look good in color and the Milky Way is a reasonable color balance ie, not ridiculously blue like most do, the first two you posted are a little too blue but the second two look good, and the lagoon, eagle, and omega nebula are pinkish like they are supposed to be. In LR if you scroll down you'll find a section where you can remove chromatic aberration, I'd definitely do that.

I love the clouds and the treeline in the first shot. Nicely done!

Great shots! You are in FL like me trying to get some milky way shots! I have to either drive from Orlando to Ocala National Forest or go into the swamp south of St. Cloud on 441. I am curious where you get good dark skies?