Milky Way as seen from the John Muir Trail in California

Just got back from hiking the John Muir Trail out in California and had a couple nights that weren't too cold to take some pics.

There's something funny going on in the corner of the first one, I'll throw up a revised edition later but wanted to share it now anyway. The first one is actually a pano stitch of a couple images into one, and I think the stitching might have gone awry towards the top as well. I'll have to work it out later.

Tamron 28-75 at 2.8, ISO 1600 and I believe 20 second exposures. Maybe 5 or 6 images taken and stitched together. This was taken at Thousand Island Lake, and that's Banner Peak under the Milky Way.

those are very crisp for 1600 ISO. How do you cut down on noise, graininess?

Great shots, I look forward to trying this out somewhen

badger, there stunning pics mate ,im to far north to see that part of the milky way but went to india last year at a dark location its was truly amazing to look at

I love these pictures. I find it very hard to take pictures of the sky at night.

Thank you very much, everyone!

painful100 wrote in post #8592139
those are very crisp for 1600 ISO. How do you cut down on noise, graininess?

I used the camera's long-exposure noise reduction for these. The RAW files still had a bit of noise when viewed in Picasa, but I edited these in Adobe Camera Raw which took out almost all of the noise. I didn't have to do any additional noise reduction beside the defaults in ACR, and I didn't run them through any other noise-reduction programs.

Scoobs wrote in post #8592523
Great shots, I look forward to trying this out somewhen

Thank you!

ady.space wrote in post #8592696
badger, there stunning pics mate ,im to far north to see that part of the milky way but went to india last year at a dark location its was truly amazing to look at

Thank you very much, I appreciate it! These skies were dark, but I still think the darkest skies I've ever seen were at the Grand Canyon.

Kevarcen wrote in post #8593011
I love these pictures. I find it very hard to take pictures of the sky at night.

Thank you!

Here is a 9 image rework of the first:

Badger49456 wrote in post #8599118
Here is a 9 image rework of the first:

Truly AWESOME!
Thanks for the pictures..
Now I REALLY want to go back to Death Valley and try this!

Thank you so much!

If anyone has any tips for printing images like these, let me know! I want to print some 36"x24"s but I'm unsure how well the color and sharpness will turn out.

Are you or any of your friends Costo members?
I'd try that first!