BIGRO Loc: NYC

My first attempt on the milky way. Can you experts give me some helpful tips

(Download)

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

Hi BIGRO,
Welcome to the AP section.
Looks good, but the focus is soft (blurry) so you need to try and sharpen it up in the camera.
Know that infinity focus is not true to it's setting. Sometimes in focus is a little one way or the other.

Focusing was always the bane of me. It seemed like I was always a little out, one way or the other. Because the screen on my camera was too dang small.
When you can see it, the Moon is your friend for focusing.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

To focus I always connect my camera to a laptop and magnify the image on a fairly bright star to focus on. With my canon DLSR the EOS utility allows for a live view mode than can also be magnified which makes this fairly easy. What type of camera where you using? To help remove noise stacking multiple images can also help. There are freeware programs like deepskystacker that is a good place to start. It will also allow you to subtract dark frames (same picture with the lens cap on) to remove electrical and thermal noise from the image.

Are you tracking the sky? If not then you want to keep your exposure length short enough to keep the stars from trailing (a rule of thumb max exposure length in seconds = 400/lens focal length in mm, e.g. 8 seconds for a 50mm lens). However here stacking can help since it will align the multiple images on the stars even through they have moved slightly from frame to frame (this also averages out noise).
check out
http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

There are also lots of tutorials on using this program.

BIGRO Loc: NYC

Thank you all

dlmorris Loc: Loma Linda, Ca

You don't give any settings or type of camera you used. I'd say use the widest lens you have. A reasonable high ISO setting (1600 is a good compromise. Higher ISO is noiser, it just depends on the camera. Just experiment. "film" is cheap!) If your horizon is reasonably dark, include a bit of that. It makes the picture more interesting. Typically the longest shot you can get is about 30 sec. Beyond that you will get noticeable star trailing.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

You need a wide angle lens and it needs a subject in the foreground. Just look at other examples. You'll know what looks good the second you see it.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Lots of good suggestions to this point in the thread; focus, exposure, ISO, noise control, focal lenght, framing, etc.

HOWEVER, post processing is also very important, particularly with astro-images. I took the liberty of downloading your image and playing with it in Photoshop (w/ the Astro Panel extension). Reduced the stars, did a white balance, increased star color and a few other tweaks.

But remember, astrophotography is like any other area of photography, make the image yours. My rework is just an example. You can do considerably better starting with the RAW image (as opposed to the JPG image).

Enjoy!

bwa

(Download)

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

Something like this where you have a foreground. In this case, Mono Lake

(Download)

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

But why no Milky Way reflection on lake's surface??

bwa

dlmorris Loc: Loma Linda, Ca

Interesting question! There are lights in the water that have no corresponding lights on the shore. Will be interested in the answer!

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

bwa