Other than aurora I've never really had much luck shooting astro, the results just never lived up to expectations. I struggled to work out what I was doing wrong when comparing my raw files to those I'd seen in processing videos on YouTube. There was only one thing for it, go to a truly dark sky area and see what I could do.
So I did the research, booked the trip and a few weeks ago got my first taste of a proper night sky on the island of La Palma in the Canaries. What a difference! A great experience, mistakes made but lots learned.
Here's a selection of the better pics I got. I know they're not the best astro shots but I'm happy with them for a first go in a location like that.
Let me know what you think.
Hey Ian!
The photos are looking good! On the 1st image I like the idea - refocusing the 'astro'-/ night approach. Clearly detecting the the night sky just with focus only on the subject. Stars are converted to bokeh. Beautiful idea!
On the others you were able to work out the MW center. And even creating panoramas. ( I never tried in any way up to now, not yet in my agenda).
Just one item to work on from my point of view: color. Some photos appear with a kind if yellow or green cast on my screen (phone!) i would expect something like a 'same color' approach for night skies. I know it's tricky, as AWB is not working well.
Kind regards, dg9ncc
Hi dg and thank you for your positive comments.
I was happy to get a couple of the panoramas right as it's something I wanted to achieve but there were a few other multi-row panos that I did get wrong for one reason or another.
With regard to the colour, I understand your thinking on the sky being consistent but I don't mind some variation as I think it depends on how you want the final image to look. That said there does seem to be a bit of a green cast on some shots despite them all being taken at 4800k (I didn't use AWB) so perhaps I'll take another look at them.