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I’ve been taking pictures of the Night Sky up in Acadia NP but I’m having difficulty with getting that “Milky Way” look that I see often. 

Any ideas on WB and any other settings you use in your workflow?

Thanks

Mike . . . . . I posted almost the same question a couple of months back in the Photography Forum. I am pretty sure that your problem is the same as my problem; ie too much light pollution. I would estimate that you need to get about 80 miles away from ANY light pollution sources. 

Hey Tim. I remember your question. I’m currently in Acadia where the night skies are dark. Last night I was photographing out on Schoodic Point over the Atlantic. I’m more interested in the post processing aspect, particularly using Capture One which I know quite a few people use.

I had quite a good tutorial on processing using Lightroom but I cant find it anymore.

I think posting a shot would help, it's hard to know where things are going wrong without knowing that. Probably an unprocessed version and then your processed version would be needed.

E.J. Peiker wrote:I think posting a shot would help, it's hard to know where things are going wrong without knowing that.  Probably an unprocessed version and then your processed version would be needed.

Thanks E.J.

We're just packing up for the drive home but I will put a suitable unprocessed image in a dropbox when I get home.

In here are three from last night Night Sky Images

Looking forward to the originals. Just from looking at those on the blog page, the first thing I would look at is exposure. The shots look a bit underexposed. What were the exposure settings?

E.J. Peiker wrote:Looking forward to the originals.  Just from looking at those on the blog page, the first thing I would look at is exposure.  The shots look a bit underexposed.  What were the exposure settings?

Here is the NEF 8secs @ ISO2500

D850 NEF

C1 Edited Version

Yup, like I thought...  I downloaded the image, it is way underexposed.  A typical exposure in a situation like that would be about 15 seconds at ISO 6400.  Your image is about 2 1/3 stops under that.  I played with it a little, knowing that it would be a very noisy image due to the severe underexposure and loaded the image into C1 and added 2 1/3 stops - here is a general starting point for you that I believe mimics more of the look you are after but realize that it would be much much better with a lot more exposure.  You will need to click on it to see the settings clearly.  Realize this is just a starting point and you will likely want to brighten the galactic core part of the image a bit relative to the rest...

Thanks for the help E.J. I’ll try out your advice next time I get to see a sky clear of light pollution. I might have to pop up to Cherry Springs SP as that is about the nearest dark sky preserve near where I live.

The core is also down by the horizon where there is more atmospheric interference. That darkens the core simply because of where it is.

Of course, the issue with using 30 seconds or more on the shot is that there will probably be earth motion in the image elongating the stars near the equator. Of course, that could be solved by using a tracking mount. Even a poorly aligned tracking mount will allow for wide angle images between 30 and 120 seconds...

Anthony Medici wrote:The core is also down by the horizon where there is more atmospheric interference. That darkens the core simply because of where it is.

Of course, the issue with using 30 seconds or more on the shot is that there will probably be earth motion in the image elongating the stars near the equator. Of course, that could be solved by using a tracking mount. Even a poorly aligned tracking mount will allow for wide angle images between 30 and 120 seconds...

I don’t get much chance to do any Astro photography in south central PA so it’s usually on vacations to Maine when I get a chance to practice.

I’ll try again next year.