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[Noob question] Genuine imaging advice wanted


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Hi Folks, Hope everyone is well. I'm new to stargazers lounge and more broadly new to astrophotography. I recently took a trip to Chile and was able to take a photo of the milky way using my iPhone 14 Pro Max. I've not done photography before. But this is what I've managed to come up with. 

I'd be keen to get any feedback on how I can make this photo better / what I should have done differently. 

 

For people's information, the original was taken with a 30s exposure, in nightmode with the ProRAW format. I've stacked the images using Starry Landscape Stacker and then edited using Adobe Lightroom. 

 

Any advice which anyone could give me would be entirely welcome. Thank you! 

milky_way_pucon_processed.jpg

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I'd be interested to see one of the original sub-exposures. This image is very heavily processed, probably via sharpening and noise reduction, so it's kinda hard to tell what's going on. Whether that happened in-camera or in post, I have no idea.

Your text seems to imply that you stacked multiple exposures, but also that you took only one, which is a bit confusing.

You definitely captured some of the area near the Galactic Center, which is always very interesting. The green color should not have been present in the original, unless you had very high levels of airglow or indeed there was an aurora going on.

For me the aurora and the Milky Way are always in opposite directions but I'm in the Northern Hemisphere -- had to wrap my mind around the transform!

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Thank you so much for your help both. I've already looked at a fair few tutorials online, but never seem to be able to get quite the same pictures they do. I'm sure I was doing something wrong, hence posting the picture here.

 

Sorry for the confusion @rickwayne, and thank you for being patient with my noob question. I did take multiple photos, each with a 30s exposure. I've attached an example of the original below... I did spend a lot of time processing the image, so I do take your point onboard. I started off with the 'auto' feature on Lightroom and went from there, which is where the green was introduced I think. 

 

Any advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated. 

 

IMG_8311.jpeg

Edited by Amit Sinha
Updated with JPG version of file..
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I actually like the second one better! MUCH more natural look.

I am partial to Lonely Speck's tutorials on photographing the Milky Way, that's how I got started and I've always had a fond place for him in my heart because of that.

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The first step in post-processing an asttrophoto is the adjustment of colour balance and the correction of colour and brightness gradients. The first requirement is to get your eye in on what's right and what's wrong with the image's colour. In the stack, the image is very green. In the single sub it's blue.  In Photoshop you can also measure the background sky (the darkest parts) by putting the colour sampler tool onto them and reading off the values in red, green and blue. They should be equal. I'm sure you can do this in other graphics programs as well.

Olly

Edited by ollypenrice
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