Milky Way Tutorial

Hey everyone....so people are wondering how to take pics of the milky way. Ive been taking pictures of the night sky through my telescope since i was in middle school with my epson point and shoot...it had a whoppin 1.3 MP and it was the best camera out lol...well anyways, obviously im way past those days.

First off, to get these shots, you need a dark location away from city lights. I have the NY State star gazing permit ($30 for the year). I mainly go to robert moses for these shots and montauk point is just amazing, but way too far to go out there every weekend.

Second, grab your gear, your widest lens you have and fastest if possible. (if you plan on zooming in with your lenses, all you'll get is the stars streaking because of the earths rotation. if you want to zoom in your going to need barn doors, which i'll be doing soon hopefully, or a tracker.). And a sturdy tripod...i use a walmart one and it works just fine (targus brand)

Now if you want to stack images, thats one thing, and the images come out amazing. That took me some time to figure out how to do. But for this write up, i'll explain how to take a single exposure shot which will get you a good shot of the milky way.

Now that your all set up, here are the basic settings you will be using:

exposure: 20-30 seconds (depends on if you get stars streaking)
f-3.5 @18mm (canon kit lens)
iso 1600
white balance set to tungsten

If your in a dark place, you'll faintly see the milky way, it almost looks like a cloud that goes across the sky from south to north.

Set your camera to have a 2 second timer so you dont get any camera shake (canon system). You can also use your mirror lock up feature if you want to.

Make sure you dont have IS feature turned off on your lens and put the camera to auto focus. Find a light source you can focus on in the distance, once its focused, switch to manual focus so it wont loose focus. (you can also just set your lens to infinity if you can).

Aim and compose your image once you found it....the south side of the milky way is the best with all the colors (from my experience).

Let the camera do its thing.

Once the exposure is done, see if the stars have streaked or if they are in focus or not. Adjust to your own liking.

Your image should look like this, this is unedited, straight from camera:


IMG_1844 by togish1, on Flickr

Thats the best as it gets people! Now you need to do some photoshop work to bring out the milky way. Its honestly up to you on how to edit the image. Curves, saturation, selective coloring, levels.....

Once you figure all that PP out, you'll have a images like this:

This is the edited version of the above image:

IMG_1844 by togish1, on Flickr


IMG_9312 by togish1, on Flickr


milkyway civic by togish1, on Flickr

This would be my first image i did stacking images.....10 light, 10 dark, 10 flat:


milkyway final by togish1, on Flickr

If you want to stack images, do your research about the types of files and how to take the images. It took me all summer to figure out how to do this with good results.

Thats honestly all it is to taking pictures of the milky way! Hope this was helpful to those who want to start taking images of the milky way!

If you have a pass and ever want to go out shooting, send me an email, i'll be going out a lot during the fall and winter nights.

streetimagephotos@gmail.com

*****NOTE*****

The milky way is already setting early. If your going to try and take pics of it, you need to go out NOW (end of august beginning of September) before its too late. I think by next week or so, the milky way will have set till the spring time. There are astronomy programs out there that will show you what the sky will look like at what day and time, so download one of those for sure.

i think by now the milky way should be due south, south/west....around 9pm