struggling with Milky Way photography

A newbie here - really struggling to get any kind of image of the Milky Way.

From what I've read, decent environment and correct camera settings can produce good single-shot images of the Milky Way.

Here's how I'm setup:

Canon EOS 1300D
settings:
Manual or Bulb > 3200 or 6400 > F00
Tripod and trigger used. Set at everything from 30sec to 2"

Lens - Samyang F2.8 14mm
set to infinity and F2.8

Trying to take photos from Fuerteventura in the Canaries - sky fully dark. no streetlights.

all I'm getting are greyish plain images.


Any help at all appreciated.

You can't just rack the focus ring to infinity, use live view to focus manually.

Posting an example would help tremendously ... "greyish plain images" is pretty meaningless.

While the Samyang/Rokinon 14 2.8 is a great lens, there is a common issue: they are not calibrated regarding focus. Infinity focus may be at 2m or 3m on the focus ring, or anywhere!

How to fix that issue:
https://www.youtube.co​m …9bcJDU2U&featur​e=youtu.be

brenski wrote in post #18825243
A newbie here - really struggling to get any kind of image of the Milky Way...............
Here's how I'm setup:

Canon EOS 1300D
settings:
Manual or Bulb > 3200 or 6400 > F00
Tripod and trigger used. Set at everything from 30sec to 2"

Lens - Samyang F2.8 14mm
set to infinity and F2.8

Trying to take photos from Fuerteventura in the Canaries - sky fully dark. no streetlights.

all I'm getting are greyish plain images.


Any help at all appreciated.

OK, as has been said, the way you are focussing is probably the main problem

You camera has live view ... USE IT
find the brightest star in the sky and manually focus on it then when still in live view increase the magnification and fine tune the focussing
in the mean time drop the ISO to around 1000 max till you start getting an image and can take a note of how bright the background is in the image
You may then find going up to 1200 or 1600 and see how it looks. But get used to experimenting with lower settings for a start


Dave

I don't disagree with the focusing comments above, but I'm also wondering about post-processing. I'm far from the best or most experienced night sky photographer, but I always have to do quite a bit in LR to really make images pop. "Greyish plain images" sounds to me like how mine come SOOC, and they just need a little lovin' to look their best.