A Night Under The Stars - Photographing The Milky Way

After moving on my dedicated astro lens, I decided to forgo my Tamron 15-30mm (F-Mount on FTV) for my old Nikkor 20mm (F-Mount) F/1.8, that I keep almost exclusively for silky smooth photos of my son and family (yes, including Frank).

The results, were a fair bit better than expected. I'm lucky enough to have a few dark places within 10 mins drive/walk from my house and using Photo Pills, quickly planed a spot and prayed for clear sky's.

As you can see, first time trying this lens meant a bit of playing around with ISO and exposure times, and to be honest, it's still not quite there. But I have a guy who has a lens I want to try. I have a lens he wants to try. So looking forward to seeing what we can get from that.

Single shot photo, Nikkor F-Mount 20mm f/1.8, 20 sec at ISO 3200. The first time I've tried astro at such a high ISO. A little noise, but this shot is basically unedited, bar a couple of minor tweaks to denoise in NX Suite.

Five shot panoramic, same settings. This time stitched in Hugin and denoised and a touch of colour added in NX Suite.

Anyone who wants to tag along early one morning (your camera or I can work something out), just send a message through the contact page and I'm more than happy to share what I've learned. Then you can go home with your own shots, of something that most people don't even stop to notice is there!