How to SHOOT THE MILKY WAY - COMPLETE BEGINNER'S GUIDE

July 13, 2019 in Best of the Blog, Photography, Tutorials

Get your first good shot of the Milky Way! This week’s video is a complete beginner's guide on how to shoot the Milky Way, covering gear, planning, shooting, and editing in Adobe Lightroom.

CONTENTS:

0:22 GEAR
3:09 PLANNING
7:36 SHOOTING
13:51 POST-PROCESSING

Shooting the Milky Way with a mobile phone: https://youtu.be/wToXZHpUwUc

LINKS TO GEAR AND APPS (Lazada links for PH viewers are affiliate links, the rest are normal links)

LENSES (2019)

Samyang 24mm f/1.4 (Canon EF) https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.bfSR
Samyang 14mm f/2.8 (Canon EF) https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.bXmc
Sigma 14mm f/1.8 (Canon EF) https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1321306-REG/sigma_14mm_f_1_8_dg_hsm.html
Laowa 15mm f/2.0 https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-15mm-f2/
Sony 24mm f/1.4 G Master (Sony FE) https://cameras.ph/product/sony-fe-24mm-f-1-4-gm-lens/
Samyang 16mm f/2.0 (Canon EF-S) https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.b07T
Fuji XF 16mm f/1.4 (Fuji X) https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.b07h
Sigma 16mm f/1.4 (Sony E) https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.0Atg

CAMERA (2019, selection only)

Entry-level DSLR: Canon EOS 200D Kit with 18-55mm lens https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.b077
Entry-level Mirrorless: Fuji X-T100 kit https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.b07i
Mid-level Mirrorless: Fuji X-T30 (body only) https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.0AtT
Advanced Mirrorless: Fuji X-T3 (body only) https://www.henryscameraphoto.com/FUJIFILM-X-T3-BODY-BLACK
Full-frame Mirrorless: Sony A7SII https://www.henryscameraphoto.com/Sony-Alpha-A7SII-BODY

TRIPODS

Benro FGP18A Go Plus Tripod https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.bfSk
Zomei M8 Go Travel Tripod https://c.lazada.com.ph/t/c.b07R

APPS AND WEBSITES

Light Pollution Map https://www.lightpollutionmap.info
Dark Site Finder https://darksitefinder.com/map
Dark Sky app https://darksky.net/app
PhotoPIlls app https://www.photopills.com/
Sky Guide (iOS) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sky-guide/id576588894
Star Walk 2 Free (Android) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vitotechnology.StarWalk2Free&hl=en
Moon Calendar https://www.moongiant.com/
Accuweather https://www.accuweather.com
Milky Way Exposure Calculator https://www.lonelyspeck.com/milky-way-exposure-calculator
Adobe Lightroom Classic https://www.adobe.com/lightroom
Lonely Speck SharpStar 2 Precision Focusing Tool https://www.lonelyspeck.com/sharpstar/

Gear used for tutorial:

Sony A6300
Sony Zeiss FE 55 f/1.8
MeFoto Roadtrip Tripod
Saramonic UwMic9

Music licensed via Epidemic Sound

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Milky Way Post-Processing Demo: "Under Guiding Lights" in Adobe Lightroom CC

November 17, 2016 in Photography, Tutorials, Video

Back with another tutorial/demo video! In this video I take you through the relatively simple process I used to edit this photo entitled "Under Guiding Lights."

For more tutorials, click here!

Shooting the Milky Way With a Mobile Phone: Testing Long Exposures on the Asus Zenfone 3

October 30, 2016 in Gear, Photography, Tutorials

Just back from Batanes as part of a large group of bloggers and other media people who were there to try out the photography features of the Asus Zenfone 3 line of mobile phones, courtesy of Asus Philippines. I was there mainly as a resource person on shooting the Milky Way, and I was intrigued about the possibility of pulling off Milky Way shots using a mobile phone. How did it turn out? Find out by watching the video above and seeing the final images below!

One of the headline features of the Asus Zenfone 3's camera is its built-in manual mode that allows you to go all the way to ISO 3200 and do long exposures of up to 32 seconds. (For comparison, using the $3.99 645 Pro app on my iPhone 6, I get up to ISO 2000 and a 1/2 second exposure at most, on f2.2.) Combined with its large aperture f/2.0 Largan lens, this would theoretically add up to the standard exposure settings for a wide angle Milky Way shot. For this post, I'm focusing exclusively on shooting the night sky and the Milky Way, saving my overall thoughts on the photography and video features of the Zenfone 3 for a post in the coming week.

2:00 in the morning and perfect night sky conditions at Saddle Camp on Mt. Pulag. Click to enlarge. Sony A7RII + Samyang 14mm f2.8 | 20s | ISO 6400.

The Starriest Nights of My Life: Night Photography on the Mt. Pulag Akiki Trail

October 22, 2016 in Photography, Photo Diaries, Tutorials

This post has been a long time coming: a showcase of the incredible night skies I experienced back in April 2016 on the Akiki Trail of Mt. Pulag. The quantity and quality of images I shot on that one trip was easily worth 3-6 months of average shooting. On this post, I take you through my best shots of the trip and the process of shooting and post-processing them --- in effect, this is my first virtual night sky workshop!

And coolest of all: my first 180-degree VR panorama of the Milky Way!

The trek on the Akiki Trail --- known as the "Killer Trail" for its seemingly never-ending steep ascents --- is worth a Photo Diary of its own, but for this post, I'll be focusing solely on the night sky shots.

Coming into the trip, I was optimistic and excited to shoot the night sky because the conditions were just right:

It was the peak of the Milky Way season in the Philippines, right in the middle of the summer;
It was just after the New Moon, and the weather forecast was good;
I had two full nights to shoot because it was a three day trek;
and, because we were on the difficult Akiki Trail, it was guaranteed there would be few other hikers to ruin my shots with their errant headlamps and indiscriminate selfies.

Better Milky Way Photos in Under 5 Minutes: An Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorial for Beginners

June 05, 2016 in Photography, Tutorials

Following up on my previous guide to shooting the Milky Way, this quick and easy tutorial is meant to give beginners a solid starting point for editing Milky Way and night sky photos in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. While it doesn't address the finer points of a perfect Milky Way edit, it will definitely give you a more visible and dramatic Milky Way galactic core and can save photos taken in less-than-ideal night sky conditions.

A summary of the basic workflow I followed in the video:

Shoot in RAW with the right aperture/ISO/shutter speed for your setup. You want your stars to be pin-sharp and not streaking lines. Use this handy calculator to get the right settings. No RAW photo? Download the RAW photo used in the tutorial here.
Set your camera calibration to Adobe Standard and turn on automatic Lens Profile Corrections for your lens. If not available, try to manually select your lens from the dropdown menu.
Set Contrast to 100 and compensate overall brightness using the Exposure slider.
Bring down Highlights slider to minimize effects of light pollution.
Set white balance by maxing out Vibrance and Saturation, then moving the Temp/Tint sliders until you have a balance of yellow, blue, magenta, and green. Set Vibrance and Saturation back to 0.
Increase Clarity to taste, taking care not to introduce unwanted artifacts and too much noise into the photo.
Apply Noise Reduction. Attempt to minimize grain without smooshing out detail excessively.

From here, you can proceed to perfecting the photo with localized edits, composites, dodging and burning, etc. Hope this helps! Til next time.

A full Milky Way galactic core over Mt. Pulag

Shoot the Milky Way Today: A Starter Kit for Beginners

May 15, 2016 in Photography, Gear

A lot of readers and followers on social media ask me how to shoot the Milky Way properly. I'm entirely self-taught, and the good news is, all the resources I used to learn are easily available online, right now.