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Now I have a camera that can provide noise free high ISO images, I thought I should give shooting the milky way a go. The most difficult thing for me was trying to find a good position/viewpoint while getting a nice composition of the milky way within frame. I had originally pre-selected a position which I thought would be OK, but alas it was totally hopeless. These were taken from another position on my way home.

Taken last night, 24-120 @ 24mm, exposure 20s @ f4, ISO2500. A passing car provided the foreground lighting.



And another with same exposure but without the passing car lighting the foreground.

Hi Geoff - I don't like the one with the very lit foreground - looks too unnatural and unbalanced.

The second is a much more pleasing end result for me - and those silhouetted trees are nice

I actually don't mind the first one, the light gives a bit of extra interest, but I agree that it is a bit unbalanced. Probably toning down the exposure on the bottom would improve it.

I quite like the first one too. As philips says, maybe pull it back just a little with a graduated ND filter mask.
But I also like the way you have used the light pollution from the town (?) over the horizon in the second to improve the silhouette in the second.

I have been playing with these lately too, and have discovered that using a technique similar to HDR blending achieves some quite stunning results.
This is a composite of five five second images @f/2.8, ISO 800.

I thought I had posted it before, but I can't find the image now.
Let me know if you want more details, but in brief: load as layers in PS; AutoAlign layers; then change the layer blending mode to one of the burns. Each of the modes gives a slightly different result, accentuating different parts of the image. From memory this was Color Burn.


For comparison, this is the single image with the meteor in it. I have posted this elsewhere, but repeat it here for the comparison.

Thanks for the info Greg. I had thought of trying HDR techniques after posting these and will give it a go to see what transpires. That said I prefer the single image that you have posted. Did you use the 16mm for those? Wider is better for this kind of stuff and is my next planned purchase.

I also prefer the second single shot (esp the trees silhouette)

Geoff M wrote:Did you use the 16mm for those?

No the 14-24 @14mm

Geoff M wrote:I prefer the single image that you have posted

Printed, the stacked image is way better. I started this because I printed the single image and it just looked flat. The print came to life with the stacked version.
I lost the silhouette in both.

I've always wanted to capture some shots like these, nice work

I like the 2nd best. I think the iluminated grass
is distracting from the sky and becomes the
primary focus of your attention.

Then, from a diferent photographer, I prefer the
4th because it appears more natural than the 3rd.

All of them very good.