harve22,
As promised here you go. There is a lot to read.
Here are my suggestions or parameters to getting you in the ballpark for Milky Way photography. Once you’re in the ballpark it will be up to you to dial in the home-run hit.
Your D5200 is plenty capable to take some spectacular Milky Way. What will determine your success is the quality of the dark sky, lens, practice, and finally your editing ability.
1. Stellarium – This program,
Stellarium, is free for desktop computers. This program will allow you to know exactly when the sun and moon will rise and set for any given date. Most importantly, you will know where the Milky Way will rise and how it will travel across the sky and where. This program is truly your best friend. Yes, the Milky Way rises and sets as well. After the moon or sun sets you will need to give it a couple hours for the over the horizon light to finally go away.
2. Tripod – A heavy tripod works well. The extra heft will help to minimize any vibrations coming from the camera. Sometimes weight is added to the tripod to keep solidly planted.
3. Lens – You can use your kit lens and get fairly good shots. However, since it sounds like this is going to be a pretty big trip I’m going to suggest renting a wide angle lens. The larger aperture (smaller number is a wider opening which allows more light in), better glass, and wide swath of sky you can capture is worth the investment of a rental lens. The lens I use and will work with your camera:
Rent Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X Pro DX-II for Nikon
To set the focus, I suggest during the day set the focus on the farthest point your can – the moon works well if it is up during the day. Once you have the lens focused switch it to manual and then tape the manual focus ring in place – use blue painters tape. Strong enough to hold the lens in place but not too strong.
4. Aperture – the wider open you can go, without distortion, the more light you can let in. First, this is important because the higher the ISO we have to use the more “noise” we introduce to the picture. Second, the longer the shutter is open the more noise in again introduced due to the heating of the camera sensor. The aforementioned lens I shoot at an aperture of 2.8 and have been very satisfied.
5. ISO – 1600 is a good place to start and move higher as/if needed. The higher the ISO the more light the sensor will capture. However, the higher the ISO the greater the noise introduced. This is where experience and being familiar with your camera comes in. You’re trying to achieve a balance between the competing noise of ISO verse long exposure noise.
6. Exposure – This is a double edged sword. The longer the shutter is open on the camera the more light your sensor is collecting. What we don’t see is how fast the stars are actually moving across the sky. A lens like my 35mm limits my star shots to 10-13 second exposure. Any longer and I start to get star trails. On my Tokina, shooting at 11mm, I can comfortably expose for 30 seconds. If the exposure time is long enough that you are getting unacceptable star trails then you must bring up the ISO or open up the aperture more or some combination of – this again comes with experience.
7. Shutter release – Pressing the shutter release is where you will introduce vibration to you picture unless you use the timer release. To do this put the camera to Live View so that the picture is being generated on the LCD. This is done so that the movement of the mirror in the camera does not introduce vibration. Now press the shutter release that you have set to timer. This will allow the camera to settle from your touching it before releasing the shutter.
Your other option is to use a remote. I do not believe the D5200 has a mirror lock up ability; so again, switch the camera to Live View. Now use the remote to trigger the shutter.
8. White Balance – I suggest setting your camera to daylight. You can expect to adjust the white balance in post processing. The reason I suggested setting it to daylight is so that auto white balance isn’t jumping around trying to figure out what the white balance should be. Once you are editing your photos you can determine where you want the white balance set to and the rest of the pictures from that night will be the same.
9. Post Processing (photo edit) – The editing is what will finally make or break your picture. With all the competing camera noise, light noise, and atmosphere your picture will need to be cleaned up to get it back to what you actually saw in the sky.
I hope this information helps. This is the information needed to get in the proverbial ballpark. Hitting the home-run will take practice as you dial in the settings you need for the particular place you are shooting and the equipment you are using.