milky way over our new house

[avkomp]

got a clear night to try for the milky way over the new house.
this was the first attempt at a pano where I didnt take any care at all but somehow the only one that worked right.

d4 17-35 f2.8 @ 2.8 25 seconds iso 5000, tripod

for those interested, this was focussed using the hyperfocal method.
previously I put lens on infinity (after all, the stars are way the hell away arent they?) but that didnt yield sharp pix,

so I gave the live view method a go, where you find a star in liveview screen and zoom up on it and manually focus til it sharp.
that actually worked for me, but need to find a star. focus point was a littel back from infinity.

hyperfocal was easy. you look it up on a chart for the lens and camera combo, in my case 3.2 metres for 17mm on the full frame, you focus at 3.2m and you are in business, just have to point the camera in the sky and start shooting.. gave pin sharp results too

I noticed that some motion is visible on the top of the frame so need to figure how to deal with that. no motion blur on individual pix, but there is perhaps a minute of difference between first and last pix,

[Isac]

Rather special shot Stephen. If I wasn't in suburbia with light pollution everywhere, I'd like to have a go at the hyper-focal method. Your house looks to be well illuminated.

[avkomp]

thanks mate. the house is not illuminated at all, I had all the lights off but swung my headlamp across it during exposure. seems to be about the right amount of light too. all in all this sequence was a fluke with the lot.
the point of the shot was going to be to have like a rainbow over us and wanted the house as foreground interest.
haveing tried lots of methods of focusing on the night sky, hyperfocal is the easiest and best imho.

used to take me about 1.5 hours to go somewhere with dark skies for night stuff, and sometimes you get there and there was cloud or something. so you wast like 3 hrs for nothing, unless you camp there of course. here I can get it all from my back door

view more of less south from back verandah. not much of foreground interest but you get the idea.

[Isac]

Nice work with this one Stephen. I like the trees for foreground interest. Although some may call it cheating, you can always add foreground interest using all sorts of freebie brushes and there's lots of other ways to add bits in there. You could even do a water reflection with it. I'm envious of the view from your back verandah.

[avkomp]

tis a great place to be, I can get back into astronomy again too. I could walk down the local park in sydney and barely see the southern cross. you can see it just above the coal sack just about the centre of frame, and the pointers below the sack and slightly left. south celestial pole just out of frame to the right

[Isac]

I can see the Southern Cross just near the coalsack.

[Grumpy John]

Hi Stephen, I really like your sky shots. This is an area of my photography that I would really like to develop. Unfortunately, living in suburban Melbourne light pollution meant that I will have to do my night photography when I am on my outback adventures.

I am very interested in learning more about the hyperfocal method you used.
I found this explanation on YouTube.

I have a DOF app on my phone and entered the settings you used, is this similar to what you came up with?

[avkomp]

thanks mate. I reckon the milky way just about shoots itself. is probably like 95 percent being there and in the dark and maybe 5 percent technique. I think my chart said hyperfocal was 3.2m,
so after you set that and turn off AF, is a case of pointing the lens in the sky and firing away. keeping the 500 rule in mind.
before the hyperfocal method dawned on my, I would take lens to infinity and back a tad, then try to find a bright star in live view then adjust focus manually to get the finest dot I could.
It Works, but not so easy.
Initially I set my lens to infinity and shot, after all the stars are way the hell away from here, right? but back a bit was better.
I used a tape measure to get hyperfocal right and dont forget this is from the subject to the film plane mark on the body, being pedantic.

the longer the focal length you use, the apparent motion of the stars increases so you need less exposure to keep them sharp,
so
the 500 rule is a useful guideline about recommended maximum exposures you can use to keep it sharp.
in my case 17mm on the full frame camera is 500/17 or 29.4. so theoretically 29 seconds is the maximum you should use to get sharp pix.
if you had a crop factor camera, say 1.5 for example it would be a focal length of 17x1.5 or 25.5mm. 500/25.5 so a maximum exposure recommended of 19.6 seconds.

I mostly start with 25 second exposures at say iso 3200 and see what I get. generally leave 25seconds alone and mess with iso to get desired result.
is dark around here so is good. think I went to 1600 iso and 25 secs as a start when I was around an hour or so from sydney. because the ambient light seemed higher.

hope that makes sense

[Grumpy John]

You have a fantastic advantage over us city dwellers regarding having a dark sky to start with. As you said in an earlier post you can drive 3 hours (minimum) to find dark skies only to have heavy clouds roll in. This is the main reason I gave up trying night skt photography. We are off to Cairns early October and I have always wanted to visit the Chillagoe Caves (~21/2 hour drive west of Cairns. Apparently this is a pretty good spot for astro photography. They even ave an observatory. I would like to have some sort of workflow ready in anticipation of getting some good images. We would probably stay there a couple of nights.

[avkomp]

I only been here since the end of january, 2019. would have retired had my place in sydney not drop massively in value. still in IT but mostly remote access now. no traffic, nature and dark skies make up for it. you cant buy the lifestyle we have here