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<blockquote data-quote="BF Hammer" data-source="post: 745432" data-attributes="member: 48483"><p>I told this story in the "post your Milky Way" thread. This is my very first attempt to photograph the Milky Way in 2017. I was not at the "dark park" purposely to do this, I was trying to capture aurora that night. I had no idea how to do it. My camera body then was a D7000 and I did (still do) have a nice lens in the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 Art.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]347052[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Single, non-stacked image with too-low ISO and too-long exposure time. I processed the crap out of that thing to get that photo.</p><p></p><p>But one year later I did some research. I used google and the dark skies map to locate a county park in Amish land to my north. I mis-used Google Earth to estimate where the Milky Way core would be at what time. Don't use Google Earth that way, it will steer you wrong. I thought it would be above a picnic shelter, instead it was prominently above the outhouse. I kept hearing coyotes so I was unwilling to explore much in the dark. Important part was I began to learn stacking with an early version of Sequator and what I needed to refine.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]347053[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>This was the shot I wanted.</p><p>[ATTACH]347054[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Fast forward to 2019 and I have many hours of watching pros on youtube. I study that same Amish-country park from Google Earth and decide I may have a south-view possibility at the boat dock for the lake. I thought the year before that it may be too wooded. I was armed with a new D750 but did not have a good full-frame wide-angle lens to use. So I just used the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 and tried. I made technical mistakes, including mistaking the zoom for the focus and not noticing in the dark. This was the one image I salvaged before the rest were taken out-of-focus.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]347055[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>But 1 month later I had purchased my Sigma 20mm f/1.4 and returned determined to not screw-up.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]347056[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]347057[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>So then this past summer I tried some impromptu photos at that same park as the original 2017 photo. I was there photographing Neowise. I used the 20mm f/1.4 and I was also armed with a new 150mm square filter holder and light-pollution filter to fit. It helped a bit with the sky contrast. But I did not get as many good photos as needed because of dew and fogging. Also you see the reflection of the lens hood in the back of the filter. I should crop it, but the photo loses something when I try. So I leave it.</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]347058[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>I credit the improvements to Sequator over the past 3 years partly for my better photos. I did invest in some better equipment and put in personal experience time. I'm still learning. I do use a Windows PC so no help with Mac software. Some things I did learn and should try to do better is that you can do your own layer-mask with a photo of the foreground you take before or after and try to make a nice long-exposure at lower ISO. I did that with the outhouse photo and it worked well. I forgot to do it with the lake photos, and instead had to rely on Sequator giving me a foreground with noisy data. It worked OK, but it could have been better with the manual touch.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BF Hammer, post: 745432, member: 48483"] I told this story in the "post your Milky Way" thread. This is my very first attempt to photograph the Milky Way in 2017. I was not at the "dark park" purposely to do this, I was trying to capture aurora that night. I had no idea how to do it. My camera body then was a D7000 and I did (still do) have a nice lens in the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 Art. [ATTACH=CONFIG]347052._xfImport[/ATTACH] Single, non-stacked image with too-low ISO and too-long exposure time. I processed the crap out of that thing to get that photo. But one year later I did some research. I used google and the dark skies map to locate a county park in Amish land to my north. I mis-used Google Earth to estimate where the Milky Way core would be at what time. Don't use Google Earth that way, it will steer you wrong. I thought it would be above a picnic shelter, instead it was prominently above the outhouse. I kept hearing coyotes so I was unwilling to explore much in the dark. Important part was I began to learn stacking with an early version of Sequator and what I needed to refine. [ATTACH=CONFIG]347053._xfImport[/ATTACH] This was the shot I wanted. [ATTACH=CONFIG]347054._xfImport[/ATTACH] Fast forward to 2019 and I have many hours of watching pros on youtube. I study that same Amish-country park from Google Earth and decide I may have a south-view possibility at the boat dock for the lake. I thought the year before that it may be too wooded. I was armed with a new D750 but did not have a good full-frame wide-angle lens to use. So I just used the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 and tried. I made technical mistakes, including mistaking the zoom for the focus and not noticing in the dark. This was the one image I salvaged before the rest were taken out-of-focus. [ATTACH=CONFIG]347055._xfImport[/ATTACH] But 1 month later I had purchased my Sigma 20mm f/1.4 and returned determined to not screw-up. [ATTACH=CONFIG]347056._xfImport[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]347057._xfImport[/ATTACH] So then this past summer I tried some impromptu photos at that same park as the original 2017 photo. I was there photographing Neowise. I used the 20mm f/1.4 and I was also armed with a new 150mm square filter holder and light-pollution filter to fit. It helped a bit with the sky contrast. But I did not get as many good photos as needed because of dew and fogging. Also you see the reflection of the lens hood in the back of the filter. I should crop it, but the photo loses something when I try. So I leave it. [ATTACH=CONFIG]347058._xfImport[/ATTACH] I credit the improvements to Sequator over the past 3 years partly for my better photos. I did invest in some better equipment and put in personal experience time. I'm still learning. I do use a Windows PC so no help with Mac software. Some things I did learn and should try to do better is that you can do your own layer-mask with a photo of the foreground you take before or after and try to make a nice long-exposure at lower ISO. I did that with the outhouse photo and it worked well. I forgot to do it with the lake photos, and instead had to rely on Sequator giving me a foreground with noisy data. It worked OK, but it could have been better with the manual touch. [/QUOTE]
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