An Evening with the Milky Way

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I was out at Joshua Tree National Park last week with the goal of shooting Deep Space Astro, but had also planned on setting up a couple of cameras so I could do timelapses of the night sky. Having car headlights on the rocks at night has been something that keeps happening and I have been trying to avoid of course, but they keep sneaking through. So on this day I had set up purposely here as I could set up my Deep Space Astro rig about 30 or 40 feet from my Jeep alongside the road, and then there was a cluster of rocks that I could go 300 or 400 yards away and set up a camera behind it to avoid any stray car headlamps. I was certain this time I would avoid them! :)

As you will see, I didn't... :rolleyes: I did try though, and they are starting not to bother me as much. I guess I price I have to pay for having a convenient dark sky location within 2 hours of home.

This was shot during the New Moon, so there was no moon at. The rocks were actually lit up really well from the night sky, they only darkened because I added global Clarity and Contrast so as to darken the sky up more. A timelapse at night will never stand up to a single image in terms of quality because of all of the global adjustments having to be used for the timelapse. As being a bit of a perfectionist with my single image astro images, it's a process for me to let go a bit in terms of quality for the timelapses, but I hope the timelapses are still enjoyable. :)

Intro and Exit parts of the Timelapse are set up in Shutter Priority with Exposure smoothing and a 5 second interval on In Camera Timelapse.

The Night sky portion was created at my normal New Moon night settings of ISO 3200, 25 secs and f2. It was shot with my D810 and the Sigma 14mm f1.8.

The Timelapse is created in Photoshop from the Aproximately 1200 images, stacked and turned into video segments. Those are then combined with the In Camera Video Timelapses in Movavi and then text and music is added there.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

PS. FocalWorld is up to 17 Subscribers on YouTube. We have gained 3 in the last month. :) That probably sounds bad, and it is. :( Please help us grow by Sharing this Timelapse and asking your Friends on FaceBook or Instagram to Subscribe. I would really like to get to 100 Subscribers, so any and all Help you can give would be appreciated. If you have idea's on how we can get more Subscribers on YouTube, please share that too. :)

 
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JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Nice one Jim. Are the flashes of light on rocks from cars?
Thanks Jameel. Yeah, some head lights. I had picked this spot taking into consideration the curves in the road, So I thought there wouldn't be any head lights aimed that way, but the light must travel way further then one would think.
 

AlanLichty

Moderator
I have the same question as Kyle - I like the overall video and watching the MW as it passes by the night sky but did find the headlights a bit distracting.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Do you ever think about editing the frames with lights to clean it up? I'm just asking out of curiosity.
When there is less then 10 frames I do, but in this case with 100’s of them I didn’t consider it. So yeah, I have done that in the past, it’s not hard just time consuming of course when you near that many frames.
 

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
I have the same question as Kyle - I like the overall video and watching the MW as it passes by the night sky but did find the headlights a bit distracting.
Thanks Alan, I am probably getting numb to the headlights as they seem impossible to escape.
 
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