Milky Way shoot failure (success!)

[Rocco]

<span>Went to Monte Cristo last night to take pictures of the Milky Way. It's about the closest mountainous area I can get to, noise polution is very minimal here. After we got up there the subject matter changed. Climbing to the highest peak, every direction all we could see were lightning storms with thousands of stars directly overhead. We were in our own little photographer's heaven, untouchable by the bad weather. The camera gods were smiling on us. (for once, a bit of luck)





<span>Here is one of my favorites of the night:


<span>[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/1000x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/8228.IMG_5F00_9856.jpg[/img]

This is basically straight from the camera, didn't adjust the color or exposure (clipped some blacks, added a bit of contrast). Just added noise reduction and minimal sharpening.


<span>Shot info below for anyone interested.

Camera: Canon EOS 7D
<span class="text_exposed_show"]Lens: EF-s 17-55mm f/2.8 IS

ISO: 640
Exposure: 30 sec.
f-stop: 2.8
Length: 17mm

[andnowimbroke]

That picture is beautiful Rocco. It

[ddt0725]

I

[icanon]

Man I wish I was there! An amazing shot. Did you do a lot of post processing?

[Kayaker72]

That must have been a lot of fun. Great pic.

[clemmb]

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwesome!

[freelanceshots]

Awesome capture!


Is that rain coming down and did lightning strikes light up the bright portion of the image? Is that the picture as shot with noise reduction software? Can you post the original image as it came out of the camera so that I/we can see what you were working from? Single exposure I'm assuming by what you wrote where I usually have to do a much longer exposure to get the stars to show up like that. I'm not in the mountains but I consider most of Arkansas where I'm stuck to be the boonies. I am not super experienced at photographing night time skies so I'm always looking to learn more. Not real sure on the photo stacking concept yet.

[Rocco]

Thanks everyone. Was definitely one of the most humbling experiences I've had so far. I don't think we said a single word to each other the whole time, almost like talking would scare the moment away.

Awesome capture!


Is that rain coming down and did lightning strikes light up the bright portion of the image? Is that the picture as shot with noise reduction software? Can you post the original image as it came out of the camera so that I/we can see what you were working from? Single exposure I'm assuming by what you wrote where I usually have to do a much longer exposure to get the stars to show up like that. I'm not in the mountains but I consider most of Arkansas where I'm stuck to be the boonies. I am not super experienced at photographing night time skies so I'm always looking to learn more. Not real sure on the photo stacking concept yet.


I know it just a simple tree here in my scene compared to yours but night photography is really fun.

It was definitely raining. I purple-ish cloud had this weird horizontal lightning cutting through it. I have another shot where that type of lightning peeked through but my settings were all wrong on that one. the orange glow you see came mostly from a small town on the other side of the hills there. If you look to the left of the lightning bolt on the right, you can see one of the lights. Guess I should also mention that my white balance was set to "daylight".


This was a single shot @ 30/sec. If I had been shooting stacked images of the milky way like I was originally planning, they would have been 15-20 seconds apart @ 17mm to avoid any type of star trail. other than pushing the blacks to 7 and adjusting the contrast, noise reduction was all that was added. There was quite a bit of noise.


Here's the shot straight out of the camera.


[img]/resized-image.ashx/__size/1000x0/__key/CommunityServer-Discussions-Components-Files/15/0020.IMG_5F00_9856.jpg[/img]

[Raid]

Rocco


Was there any sign of Charlton Heston?

[Sheiky]

Rocco, those are absolutely spectacular photos!! Really, really awesome[][Y]