Milky Way from the Maze Overlook

[Ben Egbert]

This is from a series I did for a time lapse. It was cloudy for most of the time, but towards the end, I had a few openings in the clouds and grabbed this one to show here,

Canon R5 Rokinon 14 f2.4 at 2.4, 20 seconds, ISO3200

 

[AlanLichty]

Seems a bit on the dark side but I like it.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Alan, guess I need to increase the time and maybe the ISO

 

[Jim Dockery]

I'd try bringing up the shadows a bit. I like the cloud pointing into the center.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim. It was a moonless night, the shadows have already been pulled up a bunch. I am not sure I like the color either. I will wait for other comments and make some changes then.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Keeping the ground dark, push the sky a bit. R5 should be able to handle that. Of course you can use Topaz to fix any noise later.

 

[MonikaC]

Ben, do you think you could bring some detail out of the foreground?

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ben,

The Milky Way itself looks great! Lots of nice detail in it.

That said, the sky is a bit too dark, almost a full stop.

Then the ground is probably close to 2 stops too dark.

Moonless nights will give you the very best Milky Way of course, and as we have discussed in the past shooting 3 or 4 days after the new moon can give you the best combination of Milky Way detail and faint moon light on the ground so it’s not just a huge shadow on the ground.

The solution to the ground is to brighten 5 or 6 shots, and then stack them and use a Median Blend as described in tutorials by Kyle and myself. Noise Reduction software is okay, but stacking and blending will give much better results. An added benefit from stacking a few images and doing a Median Blend is that also brightens up the ground just a bit.

Then, blend that into the sky that was brightened. Use a Luminance mask or my technique to retain details in the Milky Way and not have them blow out.

You have the makings of a really awesome Milky Way image, your best yet I think if you just brighten it.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim, I did use your technique on the sky. I maybe darkened it too much, easy to change that. Oh and large portions of sky were cloud covered.

I will have to give the stacking idea a try. I was surprise that some of the ground layer was visible at all. For the time lapse, I cropped most of it off to get 16x9 for video.

What do you think of the color?

 

[JimFox]

The color looks good, though as you brighten it, that will change for the sky. So it might need to be cooled down a bit, but right now to me the coloring is good.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Keeping the ground dark, push the sky a bit. R5 should be able to handle that. Of course you can use Topaz to fix any noise later.

Jameel, the dark areas of the sky are cloud covered.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Ben, do you think you could bring some detail out of the foreground?

Monica, the only light on the ground was starlight. I might be able to bring up more detail with Jims staking method which I must learn first. But I intended this to be a silhouette image.

 

[MonikaC]

Monica, the only light on the ground was starlight. I might be able to bring up more detail with Jims staking method which I must learn first. But I intended this to be a silhouette image.

A silhouette is fine, but there's almost no difference between it & your sky, so.....virtually no silhouette. Stacking is a good idea, but you have to have that in mind when you shoot.

 

[chuckp]

Ben, I like the colors just need some curves adjustment.

 

[Ben Egbert]

A silhouette is fine, but there's almost no difference between it & your sky, so.....virtually no silhouette. Stacking is a good idea, but you have to have that in mind when you shoot.

Right, and it's hard to do for a timelapse. Next time I do a MW I will be sure to have some moonlight

Ben, I like the colors just need some curves adjustment.

What kind of curve do you suggest. I have done some curve adjustment to brighten the lights and darken the sky. Perhaps I went too dark on the sky.

 

[chuckp]

Right, and it's hard to do for a timelapse. Next time I do a MW I will be sure to have some moonlight



What kind of curve do you suggest. I have done some curve adjustment to brighten the lights and darken the sky. Perhaps I went too dark on the sky.

I would try shadows and highlights to bring out the foreground and then the curves adjustments. I usually add several points on the curve line and try adjusting different areas.

 

[Ben Egbert]

That foreground was really black, I did not even expect to see anything. I will work on the shadows though and the curve. What am I looking for? Brighter sky's? Brighter foreground I understand. Brighter core? Brighter stars? Don't forget a lot of stars are covered by clouds.

 

[chuckp]

That foreground was really black, I did not even expect to see anything. I will work on the shadows though and the curve. What am I looking for? Brighter sky's? Brighter foreground I understand. Brighter core? Brighter stars? Don't forget a lot of stars are covered by clouds.

You will be surprised on what shows up in the foreground using shadows and highlights, I use it all the time on sunset shots. I always process my astro shots several different ways and go through them several times and pick out the one I like best. Do one with a brighter sky and foreground and then one with the foreground brighter and sky darker.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks I will give that a try.

 

[Kyle Jones]

The nice thing about having shot this for a timelapse is you have lots of images for stacking! My experience (limited as it is) with the R5 at night is you can push the shadows quite a bit at ISO 3200 and things still look pretty good. Do that for half a dozen frames and then median-average them and they should look great. I'd probably back off on the contrast in the sky a little, but you got some great stars. You might want to tint the WB a little toward magenta in the sky to get rid of some of that green tinge too. You have some great material to work with here.

I'll pull together an ISO-sensitivity post for the R5. I shot the same settings, varying only ISO from 1600-6400, and pushing the results in post to see what game me the cleanest files. I'm leaning slightly toward 3200 but they all looked pretty good. My situation was a little different, though, since I got some ground lighting from aurora. I recommend that if you can find it