How To Shoot Milky Way?

I am looking for some guidance for how to shoot the milky way... I know that the wider the lens the better. I currently only have a 50 mm and a 28-135mm kit lens. I was told before that I should use the kit lens and have it set to 28mm for best results. Now I live in the San Antonio, Texas area so it's pretty lit up here. I know I can probably move out to the hill country to better my chances of a clear shot. But I need to know how to stack images. I've seen people do one 10 min exposures and get great shots but I have also seen people talk about stacking smaller images together. I am just so noob when it comes to stuff like this. Do I need one of those tri-pods that move with the stars or will I be okay with just a regular old tri-pod? If anyone could help me better understand that would be greatly appreciated. Or even a shove in the right direction would be awesome... Thanks So Much!

Hi, and welcome. Unfortunately 28mm isn't really wide enough for good Milky Way shots. You'll get okay results if you point towards a rich part of the sky, say towards Sagittarius or Cygnus, but it'll be more of a concentrated star-field than a Milky Way shot. Worth a try though.

And at 28mm, if you don't have a tracking mount you're going to be limited to your exposure time...perhaps 10 or 12 seconds before star trails start to get too much. That's not really long enough to capture a lot of data, so no matter how many shots you stack you might not get the results you're after. (I've never tried with a 28mm myself, so I'm mostly guessing here. Even my 18mm isn't wide enough for me...should have kept my 10-22mm!)

Stacking's pretty easy though, if you do give it a try. Just download Deep Sky Stacker, it's easy to use. You just feed your images into it and it does the rest, aligning up your images one on top of the other.

Finally, if you're handy, take a look at Barn Door Trackers. Two bits of wood, a hinge, and a screw to push the bits of wood apart, like a door opening. Simple tracking mounts to vastly increase your exposure times.

Good luck.