Milky Way with DSLR

[Kon]

Hi,

I have taken a few Milky Way pics with my Nikon D3200 18-55mm lens. I am a complete novice. I tried iso 1600 and 3200 and 20s exposure. I tried to play with levels in GIMP but the results are not the best. Any suggestions or ideas on how to bring nicer colours out? happy to provide the RAW image.  I posted on a different part of this site but no replies so probably not the correct one.?

 

Thanks

[Daf1983]

Hello. I'm a complete novice aswell, so I'm not sure how much I can help you. However, I did something similar this week with similar equipment(canon 600d and the 18-55mm lens). I shot 10 seconds exposures at iso3200 and stacked 30 frames in deep sky stacker, along with 15 dark and bias frames. Not sure if my results are any better to be honest, and some cloud have crept into the shot. Was yours a single exposure? 

[Kon]

Yes single shot. Yours shows more features. I could try with stacking.

 

[Daf1983]

11 minutes ago, Kon said:

Yes single shot. Yours shows more features. I could try with stacking.

 

As I said, I'm no expert, but I would give that a go. Like you, I did the processing in gimp, but I mainly just stretched the image with curves and levels.

The quality of your skies might also have an impact. I took mine from my garden which is bortle 4/5

[M40]

Hello Gents, great pictures 👍 Another novice here with a similar camera, I have a Canon EOS100D. Never tried or downloaded either Gimp or DSS so I will stalk you two to see how you get on 😜 Another thread I posted on was talking about using DSS with a video shot from the camera, have you tried that at all?

[Daf1983]

4 minutes ago, M40 said:

Hello Gents, great pictures 👍 Another novice here with a similar camera, I have a Canon EOS100D. Never tried or downloaded either Gimp or DSS so I will stalk you two to see how you get on 😜 Another thread I posted on was talking about using DSS with a video shot from the camera, have you tried that at all?

Hi. I have taken a video of jupiter and saturn with my dob and stacked the frames in registax, which worked fairly well. It's hard work with a non tracking telescope though😏

[Kon]

3 hours ago, M40 said:

Hello Gents, great pictures 👍 Another novice here with a similar camera, I have a Canon EOS100D. Never tried or downloaded either Gimp or DSS so I will stalk you two to see how you get on 😜 Another thread I posted on was talking about using DSS with a video shot from the camera, have you tried that at all?

No I have not done a video, but worth trying it. I will give it a try next time. Thanks for the idea.

[Marvin Jenkins]

10 hours ago, Kon said:

Hi,

I have taken a few Milky Way pics with my Nikon D3200 18-55mm lens. I am a complete novice. I tried iso 1600 and 3200 and 20s exposure. I tried to play with levels in GIMP but the results are not the best. Any suggestions or ideas on how to bring nicer colours out? happy to provide the RAW image.  I posted on a different part of this site but no replies so probably not the correct one.?

 

Thanks

Firstly, Well done. Just getting out there and giving it a go deserves a big thumbs up.

I think you have done rather well. You have captured a portion of the milky way and captured it with accurate focus (soo hard). So well done.

With a 20 second exposure I am going to presume you are on a static tripod? Not some form of tracking mount? 

You have probably seen lots of amazing images of the night sky on the web. Do not be fooled, they are not cheats, but take a huge amount of planning, effort and sadly expensive equipment.

I have the D3100 with kit 18/55 and it is hard. Are you imaging from a dark sky site?
The great thing about using a DSLR is that you can experiment and see what you did. 
Do you know what settings you used to take your photo. If the lense is set on the zoom at 18mm you should have the F number at something like 3.8. You can set those parameters in the cameras manual mode.
 

Marv

[Skipper Billy]

Photographing the Milky Way requires  a good dark sky as light pollution and moonlight kills the detail.

It's also worth taking many photos and stacking them - then you can be really aggressive when stretching the image without revealing too much noise.

Shoot RAW too then you have more latitude in what you can do to it.

Please post the original file if you want us to have a go at it for you.

This was taken under Bortle 2 skies - no moon - the light pollution on the horizon is Glasgow - 80 miles away! 20 x 30 second images. ISO 1600 f2.8 Tokina 11 - 17mm lens at 17mm.

 

 

 

 

[Kon]

5 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Firstly, Well done. Just getting out there and giving it a go deserves a big thumbs up.

I think you have done rather well. You have captured a portion of the milky way and captured it with accurate focus (soo hard). So well done.

With a 20 second exposure I am going to presume you are on a static tripod? Not some form of tracking mount? 

You have probably seen lots of amazing images of the night sky on the web. Do not be fooled, they are not cheats, but take a huge amount of planning, effort and sadly expensive equipment.

I have the D3100 with kit 18/55 and it is hard. Are you imaging from a dark sky site?
The great thing about using a DSLR is that you can experiment and see what you did. 
Do you know what settings you used to take your photo. If the lense is set on the zoom at 18mm you should have the F number at something like 3.8. You can set those parameters in the cameras manual mode.
 

Marv

Hi Marv,

thanks for the encouraging comment.  Yes on a tripod. This particular shot was 20s at f3.5/iso3200 (i have been playing with iso mostly). My sky is bortle 5.

[happy-kat]

The aim is to ensure when looking at the light histogram on the camera the peak is good clear of the left edge, if you can achieve that at ISO1600 you don't need 3200

[Marvin Jenkins]

Have you tried turning off noise reduction? Any of the stuff for daytime terrestrial pics like rangefinder, turn it all off. You may already, but Skipper Billy advice shooting in RAW (NEF) for us Nikon users will make a big difference.

[Kon]

6 minutes ago, Skipper Billy said:

Photographing the Milky Way requires  a good dark sky as light pollution and moonlight kills the detail.

It's also worth taking many photos and stacking them - then you can be really aggressive when stretching the image without revealing too much noise.

Shoot RAW too then you have more latitude in what you can do to it.

Please post the original file if you want us to have a go at it for you.

This was taken under Bortle 2 skies - no moon - the light pollution on the horizon is Glasgow - 80 miles away! 20 x 30 second images. ISO 1600 f2.8 Tokina 11 - 17mm lens at 17mm.

Thanks for the suggestions.  Some others have suggested stacking. I have a Mac so i was planning to use siriL. I am attaching the RAW; thanks for taking the time to have a go at it. My sky is bortle 5.

DSC_1058.NEF

[Kon]

4 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

The aim is to ensure when looking at the light histogram on the camera the peak is good clear of the left edge, if you can achieve that at ISO1600 you don't need 3200

I will try that. Thank you.

[happy-kat]

Nikon may have different noise levels, on my Canon same era as the Canon 600D that OP has ISO3200 is too noisy to use.

[Marvin Jenkins]

I use my D3100 for a bit of light DSO (Messier objects) and find the best ISO to be around 800. 1600 is not out of the question at all but show up light pollution in your area.

As you are shooting Milky Way, why not make a lense hood out of bedroll material. Single shots on a tripod need to be free from shake so use the soft shutter option on the camera body.

Better still, buy an intervalometer (fancy timer) so you can take multiple shots without touching the camera, very cheap, and ten or twenty pictures stacked will be a giant leap forward. 
Just so you know what these rubbish hands can get from your kit with a static tripod and one exposure, Comet Neowise.

[Captain Scarlet]

rather than type out a thousand words, I’ll attach a link to my own journey starting from the exact place you’ve started:

http://www.slidingseat.net/stars/stars.html#startingout

hopefully the site works ok on your browser, seems to like a computer rather than phone though...

 the he short answer though as alluded to by @Skipper Billy is dark skies, tracking if you can, and stacked multiple exposures. 3x45s worked for me

cheers, Magnus

[M40]

Top thread this, big thanks to all for the info 👍 only problem is I now have to buy a thing called an intervalometer..... 

[Marvin Jenkins]

It will never end.

[happy-kat]

I use the inervalometer for unattended shots otherwise I use the  timelaspe in DSLR Controller with the Canon

[rickwayne]

To bring out the details and color in a dim subject like the Milky Way -- it may be bright compared to some distant nebula, but it's dim compared to a more-typical landscape or portrait shot -- you need to enhance the contrast dramatically. You'll often see that referred to as "stretching" the image. Trouble is, when you amplify the signal in this way, you amplify the noise too. "Noise" means more than just colored griblies that look like grain from old-fashioned film. It's any departure of the image from the actual scene. So it might appear as "chunkiness", or overly harsh contrast, or weird bits of color.

Shooting a very long exposure helps smooth the noise out, since as the signal (actual photons from the distant object) gets bigger, the noise is a smaller and smaller fraction of it. Stacking is just a software-enabled means of breaking one long exposure up into lots of short ones, obviating shot-wrecking problems such as satellites, fireflies alighting on the lens, tripod kicking, and "filling the well" of the sensor by maxing out the number of photons it can count at once -- to say nothing of the motion of the stars during the exposure. 

But before you try anything sophisticated, try simple things, and see how far they get you. Take that Curves tool or contrast slider or whatever you're using and really yank on it. You might not like the result, but you'll likely be amazed at just how much more detail is hiding in your image. 

You're on your way. Possibly on the way to madness, mind you, but you're going.

Edited October 12, 2020 by rickwayne

[Kon]

Excellent suggestions from everybody and a lot of things to try. Thank you very much for supportive comments and feedback. I will post an updated attempt once the skies clear!