Skip to content

Stargazing

We live in an amazing place. This was shot at 10:09 pm last night on a quick trip to sleep under the stars.  One bonus of having a dry year is virtually no mosquitoes (I think I heard one)!

Planning Milky Way Photography
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2014/04/planning-milky-way-photography.html
#milkywayphotography   #starrynights   #astrophotography  

Watching the Milky Way at 10:09 last night.

Google+: Reshared 35 times
Google+: View post on Google+

Comments

33 thoughts on “Stargazing”

  1. +Leny Kong  You can clearly see the stripe of the Milky Way including the dark detail in the center, so when I see a photo like this, it's instantly recognizable.  But our memory is not static.  Seeing a photo like this modifies our memory, makes us associate the resulting image with the original experience.  So if you go back and view the Milky Way again specifically to examine it critically and compare it to the photos you've taken, it seems that our eyes seem to pick up the individual stars better, while the camera does seem to pick up the cloud-like glow.

    So the answer is yes and no.  The camera does do a better job of picking up the faintest light, but the image you capture not only captures an immediately recognizable record of your experience, it becomes part of your current impression of the experience.  

    That's why landscape photographers can adjust a photo in post-processing software and say "This is exactly how I remember it" but they may be producing an image which doesn't really resemble the original colors much at all.  While humans can perceive and distinguish between up to millions of colors studies have concluded that we can remember as few as 17.  

    So this is how I perceive and remember the Milky Way as I pursue photographs of it.  I can see it clearly in the sky, even as I look through my viewfinder to compose the shot.  Since the image of that moment becomes my experience, whether it looks like this in all respects at the time is largely irrelevant.  Unless I specifically think about the question of how well the stars and photos match, I literally don't notice any difference between the Milky Way I see in the sky and what appears in photos like this one.  To even notice a difference, I had to go back out to consider that question while looking at the Milky Way, to see if it really looked like the photos.  I had to include that sure, there is a difference, but from the standpoint of our experience and memory, practicing Milky Way photography makes your overall experience, your perception of it, match these photos.

  2. +Jack Smith The simple answer is: full open on the aperture, max exposure time at 30 seconds, then crank up the ISO until you get what you want! You'll have it dialed in within a small handful of test shots. maybe 5 minutes total.  Ideally you'll have a lens which opens to an aperture in the f/1.4 to f/2.8 range, a wide lens equivalent to 20mm or wider on a 35mm camera helps reduce star movement, and a camera comfortable at ISO settings of 3200-6400 or more is ideal.

    There are some subtle things to watch for, like the max exposure before the stars start to visibly drag in the sky, how to minimize noise, what post-processing settings to use, how to plan Milky Way photography, how to do star trails shots and so on, but I'd be typing for hours. It's easier to review that in a night photography workshop where I just lead people through it. Some of it's in technique tip posts on my old blog http://www.MyPhotoGuides.com, just search for things like "Milky Way" "star trails" or "technique tips".

    I covered different aspects of night photography on three episodes of the +Landscape Photography Show  as well:
    http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlLN6Bdq3jrnAwmOOhU0TufC9XsjbEiK2

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Loading Facebook Comments ...