My First Attempt at Astrophotography

[Perry]

Looking for some critiques or suggestions. My gear is not the best for night shots with a 24mm (35mm equivalent) 2.4 lens in front of a one inch sensor but maybe I can do better.

 

[wsp_scott]

I think that is a pretty good first attempt. I'm far from an expert, so take this for what its worth.

I think post-processing matters a lot for astro and that means shooting RAW. If this is RAW, then you could try to boost the saturation and contrast to bring out the Milky Way a little bit more, don't get carried away, but try to make Betelguese (shoulder in Orion) and Antares (the "V" to the right of Orion) a little bit redder.

I also think that something in the foreground helps, so you might need to stitch a couple photos together given your lens.

 

[Perry]

Thanks for the ideas. I pondered if I could stitch multiple pics together or not. I’ll give that a try next time I’m in dark sky territory.

 

[ImNotDedYet]

great first image. As @wsp_scott said, astro photography requires processing. So yes, shoot raw.

I crank saturation and vibrance to 100, then adjust the color balance so the yellows and blues are roughly equal in the scene, same with the greens and reds. Then take the saturation and vibrance back down to 0. Contrast, white level, black level are used heavily by me as is sharpness. (and clarity if you're using lightroom) Just looking at this, I may make it slightly cooler color temp wise, increase clarity, sharpness and drop the black point. See how it looks at that point.

It's awesome photographing the night sky though. Well done!

 

[wsp_scott]

Thanks for the ideas. I pondered if I could stitch multiple pics together or not. I’ll give that a try next time I’m in dark sky territory.

If you haven't played with it, Microsoft ICE (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/res...tography-applications/image-composite-editor/) works really well for stitching photos.

 

[Curt]

The two best sources I've had for help on Astrophotography have been lonelyspec.com and an e-book I bought called "Milkyway Nightscapes" by Royce Bair. The e-book is very comprehensive covering everything from planning to gear to technique in taking the pictures on to how to process them in both Lightroom and Photoshop. Lonelyspec.com is also very comprehensive but it's not a sequential kind of comprehensive in the way that "Milkyway Nightscapes" is. These two sources have been game changers for me. One of the best things about both sources is that they're very inspiring. I was encouraged to go out to try the things I was reading about and then I actually had some success with my attempts which was even more encouraging.