How to Capture the Milky Way Properly?

[Jkulin]

I feel as I am doing OK with my Deep Space objects but really struggling with my Widefield of the Milky Way.

Over the last 3 years I'm managed to get away to some dark site including Southern Spain where a Sand Storm ruined the week, Le Mans where I was in a really lovely dark site about 30 miles south of the race course and then a couple of weeks ago in Selkirk in Scotland.

I have a Star Adventurer that I have had hypertuned and originally had a Nikon D800 mounted on it and it provided some marvellous tracking, such as this 450 second unguided image of the MW, I know it's fairly boring and to my mind a total failure, but the detail is quite good for a 450sec image without any guiding at all.

This was done with a 14mm Samyang Len F2.8, ISO 160, 450s, so I have to admit that I feel a complete failure at the composition and exposure. This was supposed to be Bortle 2/3 Skies

So last year I had very little opportunity for any widefield, so this year an opportunity arose to have a weekend away with my wife Deborah at the Tushielaw Inn, Ettrick Valley, Selkirk (Yes of 4 in a bed fame), some of the best skies I have ever seen, although it was claimed to be Bortle 3, I have never seen such clarity, even my wife couldn't believe how pronounced the MW was.

This time I have changed over to a Sony A7RIII (The first time of using it due to health issues) from a lifelong Nikon/Leica/Medium Format User, I changed all my lenses and obtained an adapter for the Samyang 14mm and it was that that I chose to use with the SA in Selkirk.

Now one of the main reasons for switching to Sony was its amazing ISO range up to ISO102400 and sensitivity not to mention the great flip screen that saved my back, so I hoped to capture some  scenic shots using a higher ISO than I would normally use and shorter exposures to avoid foreground blur, yes I accept that I could do a composition and lay a sharp foreground over an enhanced background but being stubborn I stupidly stuck to my originally thinking of higher ISO with shorter exposure, this was a unprocessed image as the mist was rising from the river: -

This image was taken at 10secs ISO16000 with the Samyang 14mm F2.8, so the composition is better but I feel deflated with the quality of the MW, there is no colour or emotion in it. I did bracket the shots but this one gave the greater detail.

Now from my understanding of seeing @Daniel-K's work is that the MW needs capturing in the summer months, my question is, is this the reason why the my MW is not powerful and dramatic or am I not processing it properly?

The above was taken on the 20/09 at 21:10 (if you check the exif the date an is wrong) and I was facing South as per the X on the map Map: -

I really enjoy widefield, but can't walk far thus the limitations of not doing more/enough, with this image I could drive the car down and work out of the boot and Deborah didn't moan about the cold as she could sit in it once she had seen enough, but to be truthful she thoroughly enjoyed it.

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks for your input.

[AKB]

I really love these images.  I've never tried this type of widefield myself, and always wondered how folk achieved great results.

I do feel, though, that the answer must be in the processing.  I grabbed your image and had a quick go...

 

All I've done here is to create a copy, flatten the background, stretch the image in intensity and saturation, and then mix it back with the original.  Being slightly more intelligent and using a mask would no doubt be a benefit (especially for the horrible glow I've made on the horizon.)

Hopefully, an expert will be along and tell us really how to do this properly.

Tony.

 

[Jkulin]

Thanks Tony, you have certainly improved the MW, one of the things I was trying to do without creating a composition was to keep the foreground as that was key to the image for me.

You have given me some ideas as to what is there though, thanks.