Milky Way - from Utah Mountains

Hi all. Here is my version of a Milky Way shot. It was taken with my D100 at ISO 1600 and is a combination of 2x30-second frames.
Cheers,
Tyler

Attached Image:

Nice, Ty! I switched to Canon this year because I wanted to take more images like this...and there is no doubt that Canon has the edge in the low-noise department for now.

Jeff

Boy, I gotta try doing this stuff... love these wide field Milky Way shots!

Thanks for sharing Tyler! 8)

Hi Tyler,

Nice shot.

I think these sorts of shots are best done limiting to 20 seconds unless you are autoguiding or a short focal length lens, 50mm or less.

Star trails show up at about 25 seconds on 50mm lens or longer when there is poor tracking.

So if that same shot were taken with a 24mm lens at F1.8-2.4, 20 seconds would have been fairly bright and perhaps needed more shots to stack but it would have been pinpoint stars and you'd have more signal to process to bring out the colour more in the galactic core.

I think the guideline is short shorts under 30 seconds, 10 shots or more, 50mm or smaller, F2 for close to it for wide field Milky Way shots. Also noise reduction on and white balance set to daylight or perhaps measured from a photo of a G2V star (sunlike star).

The Nikkor 50mm F1.8 lens is a beauty but would be too zoomed in for that shot. So probably around 24mm size would be the one.

Greg.

Nice Shot Tyler! What lens did you use?

Best,

Jose Suro
Tierra Verde, Florida