I have a sony a6300 and for astrophotography I own a sigma 30 1.4 and as you mention in this video the field of view sometimes can be pretty narrow. I didn't want to spend more money just for buying a wideangle lens, but with this technique I can still use the 30 mm. thank you so much 🙏🏼
More than anything else this has told me a lot about the potential of photo-editing. Here in Northern Europe clear skies are not so common so I get out whenever I can which can give me quite a backlog of unprocessed files. Seems I need to invest no small amount of time learning what can be done with Photoshop. Many thanks for the inspiration.
Damn! Saw this vid, bookmarked it thinking you'd gone out and bought some $10k medium format rig, shot some stuff over the weekend keeping my 50mm F1.8 firmly in the camera bag! Now I have to go away again to find the dark skies!! Grat information, thanks for the tutorial.
Thank you for video. It would be nice to see exactly how you did the different shots. I always thought you needed to have the tripod level. You look like you angled the camera upward on the tripod as opposed to using a multi-row pano arm.
Absolutely awesome! This makes me want the a7s so badly. I shoot currently with a Nikon D7000 which I love, but it just doesn't even compare to the a7s in low-light. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Hey Ian, love your site and the help it provides. Regarding stitching, is it possible to use what is provided in Lr CC? with Lr's new Boundary Warp function, seems like i'll be able to save a ton of detail from the corners, as opposed to cropping them away like what you did in 4:35 here
Your videos are such a large inspiration it's simply out of this world. Thank you so much for your input into this fascinating area of human discovery😃🤗🎞️ Live long and prosper👍📷🌌
Hey there, i have another question: How does this technically work? When taking ten photos with 10 seconds of exposure each, thats 100 seconds. In this timespan, the nightsky does already move on. So if you would put all the pictures together, so that the nightsky fits, wouldn't the ground (that apparently does not move) just look weird and distorted? Just a question for my technical understanding. Thanks for any kind of reply (and again sorry for my bad english)
Really informative and cut-to-the-chase video. One question however on making panoramas - How do you track the angle from top to bottom & left to right ?
Speaking of CLARITY, this is the BEST (I repeat the *BEST*) and most clear Photoshop / Lightroom Tutorial I have ever seen on RUclips. Also, because I have a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens to try this with. Would it work well with a 5DMk3, you think? Thank you..
How do people get the pictures similar to this with the headlamp shooting up into the sky? Is it as simple as just standing still with it pointed up during the exposure?
Great Video! Gonna try it out as soon as the weather conditions get better over here. Do you have any tips on how to get good white balance? It sometimes can be hard to adjust it on a little screen. Best Regards from Germany!
I've only ever shot the milky way with my 16mm nikkor but i plan to try this out this coming season. My only question is when i'm shooting the lower frames of the foreground do i expose differently? I normally burn in the foreground with a longer exposure and blend it with my sky, so does the same apply here there's just more frames?
Hey Ian I was planning to do some astrophotography later this month I don't have a big budget but are there any manual or legacy lenses that you could suggest for an APS-C size sensor and by the way amazing tutorials. Thanks a ton.
I have a question. I'll maybe buy the sigma 18-35 f1.8 for my 600D, also to take pictures of the Milky Way. Is it possible to stitch several 18mm pics together to get a wider field of view? And I'm also asking myself if there photoshop is going to struggle with the fact that the earth is rotating, so in the different images the stars won't be at the same point in the sky ^^ Hopefully I'll get an answer:)
Amazing shot! I was wondering what the orange/gold glow near the horizon is from? did you shot just past golden hour or is it from light pollution? Thanks for the tutorial I had been thinking i will need to invest in a wide angle lens for astrophotography but now i think i might be able to hold it off for time being.
how do you pan the camera on the tripod? i tried to shoot a panorama also, but it came out terrible because (i think) the individual shots were not aligned well.
Ian,the video's great. I have a question to ask, so can I use a ball head to shoot different frames? I mean that without a pano head my Axis does change a bit when going to the next image, would that create uneven results or Lightroom/photoshop fixes it?
Ian, I was taught to shoot normal single-row panoramas with the camera in vertical orientation, and have made some Miky Way panoramas that way with a wide-angle lens (20mm-e). But what orientation do you use/recommend for multi-row Milky Way panoramas with a more normal (35mm-e or more) lens?
I now keep my camera horizontal almost purely because it's more ergonomic. It will end up with more rows, but less columns. Ultimately, either way works.
Hello Ian, which kind of camera mount do you use for these panoramas? A Manfrotto 300N will be enough, or do you need to keep a nodal point even if the horizon is quite far? Is a 30% overlap enough, or 50% will be better? ATB from Italy! Marco
***** Hi Ian, thank you very much! May I ask which kind of ballhead and (even more important) which kind of camera mount do you use? I do see the camera mount has a nice L shape in portrait orientation, with good camera support. Please excuse my bad English! A Merry Xmas and A Happy New Year from Italy! Marco
Awesome video! One of the best I've seen. One question, (sorry if I missed this) what time did you take this photograph at? I'm assuming sometime in the early morning in order to get that light on the horizon?
hi, i have a question. PS do not merge all my 18 pics. pictures with only stars are out off final stitched image. just pics with ground and milky way are ok. what now?
hey Ian, just starting out with this so i have a question. how do you know your taking shots with 50% of your last photo? my question essentially is how do you go about moving your tripod when taking your 11 shots? many thanks Sha
Get a faster lens (like ƒ/1.8) and stop down on the ISO. ISO is just here to capture stars quicker and avoid seeing the movement. Also, noise reduction by stacking different exposures is pretty easy (is case you're not doing panos). You could have crazy result with "just" your D7100.
Benjamin Crozat I've shot stars before. I have a 14mm f2.8 that I use a lot, as well as a 35mm f1.8. I was just commenting on how impressed I was by the ISO performance of his camera. The D7100 is a 4 year old camera, and doesnt handle high ISO quite as well as some newer cameras.
I just shot my first time lapse manually this weekend and your videos have been a great help in editing!! The tweaking of the temperature using the vibrance and saturation was really cool. Thank you very much sir!! :) and if I may ask, what kind of intervalometer do you suggest I use? my camera is canon 1100D :)
So I noticed you didn't touch the luminance bar. Is that because there wasn't much noise because your lens you were using was amazing or because you just usually don't? My lens is not very good and I have a hard time getting rid of the noise.
Noise is 100% a body issue, not lens. What body are you using? Pretty much any full frame camera will do an incredible job tackling noise; while on my 7D mk1 I was shooting at ISO 4000 and it was unbearable. I think your best bet to reduce noise would be shooting at a wide open aperture (or near it), so you can let more light in and not need to rely on ISO to get a good exposure. In his case, there was nearly no noise to begin with, because he is using the Sony A7s. That camera is literally the king of lowlight, and the noise control on this thing is stupid awesome.
Daniel Han I am using a canon 70D which (when I did research before buying a camera) I read was one of the best crop sensors for astrophotography. It was between 70D and a7s
PM7Gaming Man, If you are shooting with the 600d anothee body isnt going to do nothing. I recommend you a 60d, or if you have the money the 80d or even a ff camera. Definetly the 600d isnt gonna take that low noise pics since its an apsc and the a7s is a ff with 12mp. (A7s is the king of low light) but you are gonna get some decent shots if you know how to do them. A samyang 8mm or 14mm lens, or 35mm (for panoramas) would be great, they are so good for the price. Ya i know I'm late xD
i have 5dmiii with 14mm 2.8 and been visiting malibu to get shots of milky on new moon nights and perfect timing according to lonely speck website and looking into direction according to star walk app...still all i get are stars and no milky..what m i doing wrong :|
You say that your settings were 10sec iso 6400 but on the screen it says 8 sec 12800? I don't mind either way but just be accurate please. Also when do you do noise reduction?
Ok I'm with one of the guys in the comments, first how did you get that much light and have almost zero grain at 12800 iso AND how is the Milkyway not blurry because that's 100 seconds it should have moved
The lens I'm using has a fairly large aperture so it collects enough light, even in 10 seconds per exposure for ISO 12800 to have only a little noise, particularly with the camera I use (Sony a7S). But since each base exposure is only 10 seconds, that's short enough to prevent there from being too much star trailing. There is a tiny bit of motion blurred stars if viewed at 100%. Each star is blurred about 7 pixels on my 12 megapixel camera, which is not really noticeable when looking at the image as a whole. The Earth only rotates about 0.25 degrees per minute or 0.0416 degrees per every 10 seconds. So in the time it took to shoot the pano, the sky would have only moved half a degree. That's a small enough amount of movement that it doesn't pose a problem for this technique.
How is it possible to take 10 photos of the nightsky without having startrails? Because to shot 10 photos it needs lot of time, and it´s a known problem that we haven´t lot of time because the stars are moving. Why this problem doesn´t exists with panoramas?
Thanks for the response! Well, that's interesting. I heard from a YT Vid that someone made a panorama of the night sky that took an hour. And it's impressive that the movement of the earth can be hidden by the stitch with shots during an hour.
It's definitely possible that an extra time could cause doubling of stars or missing stars but they are usually hidden by the stitch if done well. Maybe a 1:1 comparison with a star chart, or a poorly aligned stitch, might reveal the problems. One hour is a loooong time to take as the earth rotates 15 degrees in that time. That's one of my reasons for preferring to perform relatively small panoramas with about 8-12 frames maximum.
This is by far the most useful photography RUclips account I have ever encountered. Bravo!
I have a sony a6300 and for astrophotography I own a sigma 30 1.4 and as you mention in this video the field of view sometimes can be pretty narrow. I didn't want to spend more money just for buying a wideangle lens, but with this technique I can still use the 30 mm. thank you so much 🙏🏼
Great tutorial. I just wish I can see a comparison shot between doing this panorama job and simply using a 24mm lens.
Forgot to add how brilliant this is.
More than anything else this has told me a lot about the potential of photo-editing. Here in Northern Europe clear skies are not so common so I get out whenever I can which can give me quite a backlog of unprocessed files.
Seems I need to invest no small amount of time learning what can be done with Photoshop.
Many thanks for the inspiration.
SEQUATOR free software now available. Give it a try.
You are a very good instructor: nice pace and packed with information. Thanks for sharing your artistry and techniques!
Thanks for your explanation, I finally understood this technique with your tutorial.
Damn! Saw this vid, bookmarked it thinking you'd gone out and bought some $10k medium format rig, shot some stuff over the weekend keeping my 50mm F1.8 firmly in the camera bag! Now I have to go away again to find the dark skies!! Grat information, thanks for the tutorial.
Thank you for video. It would be nice to see exactly how you did the different shots. I always thought you needed to have the tripod level. You look like you angled the camera upward on the tripod as opposed to using a multi-row pano arm.
Absolutely awesome! This makes me want the a7s so badly. I shoot currently with a Nikon D7000 which I love, but it just doesn't even compare to the a7s in low-light. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Hey Ian, love your site and the help it provides. Regarding stitching, is it possible to use what is provided in Lr CC? with Lr's new Boundary Warp function, seems like i'll be able to save a ton of detail from the corners, as opposed to cropping them away like what you did in 4:35 here
Yes, the new LR panorama mode is very nice and one of my new preferable methods.
Hi Ian, I was wondering if you use Daylight and Clear settings for astrophotography as you show in here 2:01
Wow, super insightful tutorial on, what I assume to be, the basics of Lightroom.
This is definitely inspiring me to get back into photography.
Can't wait to try astrophotography again after watching this vid... Thanks!!!!
Really awesome and well done tutorial! Thank you for sharing your art and creativity! -Chris
your tutorials are just incredible
You and your tutorial are great, Ian. Thanks!
Incredibly helpful video, excellent final result as well. Thanks!!
Your videos are such a large inspiration it's simply out of this world. Thank you so much for your input into this fascinating area of human discovery😃🤗🎞️ Live long and prosper👍📷🌌
Hey there, i have another question:
How does this technically work? When taking ten photos with 10 seconds of exposure each, thats 100 seconds. In this timespan, the nightsky does already move on. So if you would put all the pictures together, so that the nightsky fits, wouldn't the ground (that apparently does not move) just look weird and distorted? Just a question for my technical understanding.
Thanks for any kind of reply (and again sorry for my bad english)
5 years and no answer, that's pretty shit.
Did u get the answer?
This could help
ruclips.net/video/96iDYMfTji4/видео.html
@@PhrozenPhlanges bruh
Ian, I'm already your fan mate! God bless you and your job!) Keep it going!
Really informative and cut-to-the-chase video. One question however on making panoramas - How do you track the angle from top to bottom & left to right ?
this is so easy. You're such a great instructor and I'm buying Creative Cloud
Great results. Can I achieve that with 50mm 1.8 on APS-C or it will be rather difficult to set the time with the smaller angle of view?
Good stuff Ian I was think if you bump the iso too 1600 wouldn't it get some noise in the picture ? Just wondering
really good workflow, good article. I learned a lot.
Speaking of CLARITY, this is the BEST (I repeat the *BEST*) and most clear Photoshop / Lightroom Tutorial I have ever seen on RUclips. Also, because I have a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens to try this with. Would it work well with a 5DMk3, you think?
Thank you..
heck yeah it would work with that camera. Just don't shoot at 12800 ISO like he did; the A7S is a different beast when it comes to ISO levels
Really helpful tutorial - thanks a lot!
How do people get the pictures similar to this with the headlamp shooting up into the sky? Is it as simple as just standing still with it pointed up during the exposure?
Great Video! Gonna try it out as soon as the weather conditions get better over here.
Do you have any tips on how to get good white balance? It sometimes can be hard to adjust it on a little screen.
Best Regards from Germany!
Man! i would love to tag along with you one day to take some astrophotos and learn a thing or two(waay more). That woule be an awesome adventure!
Hey Ian, I have a question. Is it at all possible to reduce the noise with a smart objects stacking median or any other way with this process?
Great video! I learned a bunch!
I've only ever shot the milky way with my 16mm nikkor but i plan to try this out this coming season. My only question is when i'm shooting the lower frames of the foreground do i expose differently? I normally burn in the foreground with a longer exposure and blend it with my sky, so does the same apply here there's just more frames?
Another great video. Thank you!!
Hey Ian I was planning to do some astrophotography later this month I don't have a big budget but are there any manual or legacy lenses that you could suggest for an APS-C size sensor and by the way amazing tutorials. Thanks a ton.
I have a question. I'll maybe buy the sigma 18-35 f1.8 for my 600D, also to take pictures of the Milky Way. Is it possible to stitch several 18mm pics together to get a wider field of view? And I'm also asking myself if there photoshop is going to struggle with the fact that the earth is rotating, so in the different images the stars won't be at the same point in the sky ^^
Hopefully I'll get an answer:)
Dude this is super helpful, thanks!
As always, amazing video!
Amazing shot! I was wondering what the orange/gold glow near the horizon is from? did you shot just past golden hour or is it from light pollution? Thanks for the tutorial I had been thinking i will need to invest in a wide angle lens for astrophotography but now i think i might be able to hold it off for time being.
Overlapping of about 50% - what angle is it more or less on the ballhead?
how do you pan the camera on the tripod? i tried to shoot a panorama also, but it came out terrible because (i think) the individual shots were not aligned well.
Ian,the video's great. I have a question to ask, so can I use a ball head to shoot different frames? I mean that without a pano head my Axis does change a bit when going to the next image, would that create uneven results or Lightroom/photoshop fixes it?
Very nice tutorial!
Ian, I was taught to shoot normal single-row panoramas with the camera in vertical orientation, and have made some Miky Way panoramas that way with a wide-angle lens (20mm-e). But what orientation do you use/recommend for multi-row Milky Way panoramas with a more normal (35mm-e or more) lens?
I now keep my camera horizontal almost purely because it's more ergonomic. It will end up with more rows, but less columns. Ultimately, either way works.
@@LonelySpeck OK, good to know. Thank you!
Great tutorial, thank you ! I have one question : how do you manage the stars movement between the first picture and the eighth?
Ok thanks!
@@quentinarrault3585 ?
Hello Ian, which kind of camera mount do you use for these panoramas?
A Manfrotto 300N will be enough, or do you need to keep a nodal point even if the horizon is quite far?
Is a 30% overlap enough, or 50% will be better?
ATB from Italy! Marco
*****
Hi Ian, thank you very much! May I ask which kind of ballhead and (even more important) which kind of camera mount do you use?
I do see the camera mount has a nice L shape in portrait orientation, with good camera support.
Please excuse my bad English!
A Merry Xmas and A Happy New Year from Italy!
Marco
Awesome video! One of the best I've seen. One question, (sorry if I missed this) what time did you take this photograph at? I'm assuming sometime in the early morning in order to get that light on the horizon?
***** Ah okay, thanks for the reply!
The best one tutorial. Thanks!!!
I think you mean "hi resolution" or "ultrahigh resolution" astrophotography
hi, i have a question. PS do not merge all my 18 pics. pictures with only stars are out off final stitched image. just pics with ground and milky way are ok. what now?
this dude is a beast...
Love your work!!
I have a problem when the photos merged because there is no me inside that photos, any tips or solution?
where do you shoot these pics?! gorgeous.
hey Ian, just starting out with this so i have a question. how do you know your taking shots with 50% of your last photo? my question essentially is how do you go about moving your tripod when taking your 11 shots? many thanks Sha
Would doing this with a mirco four thirds camera (25mm lens) give you a full frame look or closer to something you could expect from APSC?
Subbed, this is awesome man! :)
how to shot 6x6 ? i'm so confused please help me!
Good god that camera is good at ISO 6400! I would have to stack at least 10 shots from my d7100 to have that little noise.
Get a faster lens (like ƒ/1.8) and stop down on the ISO. ISO is just here to capture stars quicker and avoid seeing the movement. Also, noise reduction by stacking different exposures is pretty easy (is case you're not doing panos). You could have crazy result with "just" your D7100.
Benjamin Crozat I've shot stars before. I have a 14mm f2.8 that I use a lot, as well as a 35mm f1.8. I was just commenting on how impressed I was by the ISO performance of his camera. The D7100 is a 4 year old camera, and doesnt handle high ISO quite as well as some newer cameras.
I just shot my first time lapse manually this weekend and your videos have been a great help in editing!! The tweaking of the temperature using the vibrance and saturation was really cool. Thank you very much sir!! :)
and if I may ask, what kind of intervalometer do you suggest I use? my camera is canon 1100D :)
Thank you so much!
Nice work!
So I noticed you didn't touch the luminance bar. Is that because there wasn't much noise because your lens you were using was amazing or because you just usually don't? My lens is not very good and I have a hard time getting rid of the noise.
Noise is 100% a body issue, not lens. What body are you using? Pretty much any full frame camera will do an incredible job tackling noise; while on my 7D mk1 I was shooting at ISO 4000 and it was unbearable. I think your best bet to reduce noise would be shooting at a wide open aperture (or near it), so you can let more light in and not need to rely on ISO to get a good exposure.
In his case, there was nearly no noise to begin with, because he is using the Sony A7s. That camera is literally the king of lowlight, and the noise control on this thing is stupid awesome.
Daniel Han I am using a canon 70D which (when I did research before buying a camera) I read was one of the best crop sensors for astrophotography. It was between 70D and a7s
Can I get these shots on apsC 600d? With 50mm 1.8? Also im buying 760d will that help?
PM7Gaming Man, If you are shooting with the 600d anothee body isnt going to do nothing. I recommend you a 60d, or if you have the money the 80d or even a ff camera. Definetly the 600d isnt gonna take that low noise pics since its an apsc and the a7s is a ff with 12mp. (A7s is the king of low light) but you are gonna get some decent shots if you know how to do them. A samyang 8mm or 14mm lens, or 35mm (for panoramas) would be great, they are so good for the price. Ya i know I'm late xD
i tried to do astrophotography but with my micro 4/3 is not easy, i get a lot of noise
Great video! Thanks!
you have the best intro
My panoramas always end up coming out really distorted and not very well blended, is this due to how I actually took the photos?
i have 5dmiii with 14mm 2.8 and been visiting malibu to get shots of milky on new moon nights and perfect timing according to lonely speck website and looking into direction according to star walk app...still all i get are stars and no milky..what m i doing wrong :|
Have any samples to share? Shoot me an email at lonelyspeckblog@gmail.com
what about a 18 or a 14 mm isnt that better since its wider ?
you'll get more lens distortion that photoshop will have to correct but I guess you could certainly do it!
Was that a a7r or a7s?
Really thanks my friend with yr great work, I am your fan :) respect :)
Too good mate. Thanks heaps.
great video!!!
quite helpful video !!!!
Superb!
Thank you for sharing.
Good job.
Awesome! thanks man!
You say that your settings were 10sec iso 6400 but on the screen it says 8 sec 12800?
I don't mind either way but just be accurate please. Also when do you do noise reduction?
Jules Willoughby He does not do NR because his camera (Sony A7s) creates almost no noise.
How did you mount your camera on your tripod vertically?
Seth Wortman I just rotate the ball head 90 degrees or use an Arca L-Bracket
dude you are simply awesome thank you
thanks Ian a lot!! I will try it :)
Thank you.
Amazing Tutorial :)
Ok I'm with one of the guys in the comments, first how did you get that much light and have almost zero grain at 12800 iso AND how is the Milkyway not blurry because that's 100 seconds it should have moved
The lens I'm using has a fairly large aperture so it collects enough light, even in 10 seconds per exposure for ISO 12800 to have only a little noise, particularly with the camera I use (Sony a7S). But since each base exposure is only 10 seconds, that's short enough to prevent there from being too much star trailing. There is a tiny bit of motion blurred stars if viewed at 100%. Each star is blurred about 7 pixels on my 12 megapixel camera, which is not really noticeable when looking at the image as a whole.
The Earth only rotates about 0.25 degrees per minute or 0.0416 degrees per every 10 seconds. So in the time it took to shoot the pano, the sky would have only moved half a degree. That's a small enough amount of movement that it doesn't pose a problem for this technique.
Please make more videos :(
amazing amazing :) , thank you for sharing with us :*
Awesome!!
MAN YOU'RE F** AWESOME!!!
How is it possible to take 10 photos of the nightsky without having startrails?
Because to shot 10 photos it needs lot of time, and it´s a known problem that we haven´t lot of time because the stars are moving. Why this problem doesn´t exists with panoramas?
Each shot is short so the individual shots will not have trails. Any misalignment from the movement of earth is usually hidden by the stitch.
Thanks for the response!
Well, that's interesting. I heard from a YT Vid that someone made a panorama of the night sky that took an hour. And it's impressive that the movement of the earth can be hidden by the stitch with shots during an hour.
It's definitely possible that an extra time could cause doubling of stars or missing stars but they are usually hidden by the stitch if done well. Maybe a 1:1 comparison with a star chart, or a poorly aligned stitch, might reveal the problems. One hour is a loooong time to take as the earth rotates 15 degrees in that time. That's one of my reasons for preferring to perform relatively small panoramas with about 8-12 frames maximum.
Omg thank you🤗
Thanks :)
Saying 6400 iso, but shoot 12800 :)
lol yeah. Gotta love the A7S
Do you set your focus on your girlfriend or on the stars?
In this case, on the stars.
Thanks for the quick reply :)
I think "medium format" is a bit misleading for the title. Still a nice tutorial, never considered using my 50mm lens for astrophotography.
are you sure you use medium format ?
We have the exact same tripod haha!
HansensUniverse may I ask what specific brand/model of tri-pod that is? :)
Suree, it is a Sirui T-005KX
Thank you. ^_^
wtf,my mind has been blown.