Like many of you reading this, I’ve spent the vast majority of the past three months at home. For the first two months I didn’t go into grocery stores. I didn’t go into home improvement stores. I didn’t go for a drive. I barely took any new photos, and when I did, I didn’t leave my yard. I just did what I could at home with what I had. This included making weird, incomplete meals, like burritos without wraps or spaghetti with only the sauce and meatballs. And working in the yard, of course.
My indoor time was spent reading online articles ranging from the absurdly optimistic (“Clinical trials advancing quickly! We’ll have a vaccine very, very soon!”) to outright depressing (“We’re all going to die and nothing will be the same.”)
But the silver lining in all this is the amount of time I’ve had to go through my unpublished photos and review them. And I cannot express enough how big of a deal this has been (and will be) for me.
Over the past five years or so the pace of my little photography career had increased rapidly. Workshops and private lessons both in Oregon and throughout the West meant that I was spending most of my time helping clients acquire and post-process photos and doing very, very little of my own acquisition and post-processing. I struggled to post-process my own work when I was away from home.
These unpublished photos were an albatross around my neck. I had a hard time staying motivated creatively. And it’s very difficult to return to a place like Arches National Park for another round of night-sky photos when I haven’t even fully found out what I got the previous time.
My photographic process has always been about refining and improvement, either via my vision, my in-field techniques, my post-processing techniques, or, in some cases, my gear. I felt like I had skipped this crucial step over the past few years, and I owed a lot of that to an inability to mine my archives of its full potential.
I’m not finished with my backlog yet. But I already feel much better about it and am on track to finish it.
Here’s a sampling of night-sky photos I’ve finally had the opportunity to work on and publish. It only took the external forces of a global pandemic to make it happen.
Crumbling rocks in the Utah desert, beneath a Milky Way sky filled with green-yellow-orange airglow. As of the time of publication, this photo (taken two years before), has about 8,500 views on Flickr! The Milky Way arches over Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa and its famous sailing stones. Multi-row panoramas of the night sky can be somewhat difficult and time-consuming to put together, so of course they’re some of the last photos that I get around to processing.The Milky Way arches over the summit of Mauna Kea, with the Keck Observatory being closest (in the left of the frame). Glow from Kiluea’s 2018 eruption can be seen along the horizon at the middle-right of frame.
“Equilibrium,” a whitebark pine hangs on the rim of Crater Lake by its roots, while the Milky Way spins overhead; prints available here.
I took a physical geography class years ago, and the main thing I took away from it was that wind and water are the Earth’s primary erosive forces. And Crater Lake’s not lacking for either of them.
Crater Lake in summertime is very different than Crater Lake during any other season, mostly because the place is buried in snow from early fall through late spring (if not longer). To a certain extent, that snowy winter coat protects some of the native trees and plants. But the water resulting from 10 feet of snow melting can move a lot of soil around. Once the trees are unburied they’re subjected to Crater Lake’s infamous wind. When the wind gusts at over 30 mph, the top layer of that volcanic soil takes flight, and you can feel its sting against your shins (if you happen to be out there in shorts) or even your arms and face. In these harsh conditions, figuring out the reason why many of the rim’s whitebark pines have become denuded of their bark over time doesn’t take a lot of imagination.
Unfortunately, man’s presence further accelerates the process. We move soil (both inadvertently and on purpose), trample plants that would better secure the soil to the ground, and some of us will even climb on some of these ancient trees in order to get a good selfie. The phrase “loved to death” springs to mind, but I would never begrudge anyone the opportunity to experience Crater Lake’s beauty in the same ways that I have (although I’ve never climbed any trees in the park).
At some future point, this spot may be closed to the public so that restoration can take place. At some other future point, this tree will likely fall into the crater, a (hopefully) natural act that was to some degree partially hastened by my many trips to photograph the tree. And at some long future point, if diseases like blister rust and insects like the mountain pine beetle win out, whitebark pines on the rim of the lake will cease to exist at all.
These seem like slow-moving or outright invisible processes, but I’m always surprised at the changes I see in these trees year over year: an extra twist in the bark, a more-exposed root, a fracture in an exposed root that was likely caused by a human’s weight. It’s these little changes that motivate me to go check in with these old trees, my old friends, to see how they’re holding up. And in the process I take another photo and make another memory.
Big news, everyone! I’m delighted to announce that my photo “A raising of the hackles” won third place in The World at Night’s (TWAN’s) 6th annual Earth and Sky Photo Contest. This is really exciting for me because, for one, I see TWAN as doing important work: It’s easy to point out the differences among all of us (and when I say “us,” I mean the people of the world), but it’s much more difficult to show how alike we are and to reveal how much we have in common. TWAN blends science and the arts to deliver the message that we all share the same night sky, not just visually in the form of stargazing but culturally as well.
Second, I look up to this organization and its members and photographers greatly. If you follow the link to the TWAN page take a moment, scroll down, and check out the contest judges and their work–impressive stuff.
Third, night-sky photography is still a niche form of photography, a subgenre of a subgenre, but it’s gaining in popularity every day. Even in the last five years, I’ve seen a major change of behavior among landscape photographers: They’re sticking around after the sun goes down. I was at a popular location at Mt St Helens Saturday night, and I swear I only saw two photographers leave after the golden hour. At least 15 photographers stuck around to shoot stars. Five years ago, those numbers would’ve been reversed. This TWAN contest represents the very best of my favorite type of photography and is an annual benchmark to see how high the bar has been raised. It’s an honor to be included.
“A raising of the hackles,” third place winner, Beauty of the Night Sky category, The World at Night 6th annual Earth and Sky photo contest. Big, beautiful prints of this photo are available for purchase here.
Your phone’s alarm clock jolts you awake. Your back aches, but you finally slept well for about an hour and a half, anyway.
You sit up, turn the alarm off, and put the phone in your right cargo pocket of your pants. It’s dark and finally quiet, save for the gusting winds gently rocking your car. Your mind clears, and your heart rate jumps. It’s time to shoot the stars.
You pick up your wallet and put it in your back pocket; your flashlight goes in your left cargo pocket; your keys go in your right-front zipper pocket; your headlamp goes around your neck. Everything’s organized, sequenced; you’ve done this routine dozens of time and can do it with your eyes half closed, in the dark. You open the car’s back door to put on your shoes and step out into the gravel parking lot. Cold air rushes in, defogging the windows. The dome light on your car doesn’t come on–you turned it off a couple of years ago to help save your night vision.
Upward, the sky’s filled end to end with gleaming stars. You take a brief second to admire them, and refocus. You put on your long-sleeve shirt. You pick up your trusty 15-year-old wool sweater that you were using as a pillow and put that on too. You throw on your jacket, which has your shutter release in the right pocket, gloves thin enough to work your camera’s controls in the left pocket. You put on your neck gaiter and stocking hat and slide your headlamp up from around your neck onto your head, over the stocking hat. The headlamp’s still off–you’re still trying to save your night vision, always trying to work in the dark as much as possible.
You grab your backpack and tripod, close the back door of the car, and beep it locked with a twinge of guilt at possibly disturbing campers who were keeping you awake just a few hours earlier.
You start hiking. Quickly the terrain goes from safe and well-traveled to right along the edge of a gaping canyon. Below you–maybe 100 feet–is a 200-foot waterfall flowing at its spring rate–a high volume. The waterfall’s roar blots out every other noise in the night. The white noise of waterfalls and wind occupies nearly all of your senses; your eyes see only basic shapes in the blue-black geography around you land and pinhole lights in the sky. Cold creeps into your body at your extremities.
You can feel a small rumble beneath your feet. You set your tripod down, and as you release your grip you can feel it humming. You inch closer to the edge of the cliff, thinking about the crumbling piles of basalt several hundred feet below. You wonder about how long ago they fell. Two thousand years? One hundred fifty years? Five years? News reports of recent earthquakes in southern California and Mt Hood flash into your brain. You wonder how long the rock below your feet would stay put if the earth started to shake.
You look through your eyepiece; because you’re shooting with a wide lens, the edge of the cliff is in the bottom of your frame. You need to move closer. You turn on your headlamp (there goes your night vision, but you’re not going to risk getting any closer in the darkness), double-check the edge of the cliff again, take a deep breath, and move your tripod as close to the edge as possible. Holding onto your tripod with your left hand so that it doesn’t fall off the cliff, you carefully check the bubble level to make sure its level.
You turn your head lamp off and vow to not take a single step–certainly not a step forward, but also not to the left or directly behind you, where the ground falls away to a large crack, and then, of course, a long tumble.
You aren’t prone to vertigo, but your head swims in the pitch darkness. You can’t escape the feeling that you’re floating in space. The ground is a flat, detail-less black. You renew your vow not to take a single step, to keep your feet planted exactly where they are. Don’t… move…
You line up the shot–your eyes have adjusted, thankfully, and you can just barely differentiate the deep black of the canyon from the not-quite-as-deep black of the horizon.
You trip the shutter, in the dark, alone, and start counting along with the timer…one…two…three…
I’ve been re-processing a number of my old photos lately. A while back I received an IPS monitor as an early Christmas present; as someone who had struggled to find the black point and a reasonable level of contrast in the night sky, this monitor was a great addition to my post-processing tool set. I can’t account for your web browser or your monitor’s color profile, but I’m much, much closer to printing exactly what I see on my monitor. For me, as always, it’s still all about the print.
Additionally, my thinking has slowly evolved when it comes to deep, detail-less shadows (or even not-so-deep shadows) in night photos. Years ago I relied on the heavy lifting of the shadow and/or blacks slider in Lightroom 4 or 5 to pull detail out of these darkened corners. But Lightroom (and Adobe Camera Raw) are strong medicine, and just because you can pull sliders all the way to the left or right doesn’t mean you should. Lifting shadows too much often gave me undesirable results (purple blotching and noise, for instance), which resulted in even more time spent post-processing.
Slowly I’ve worked away from the I-have-to-have-detail model, at least when it comes to night photography. I’ve come to accept that the night will have shadows–sometimes shadows so deep and dark that they’re completely impenetrable.
This photo of Delicate Arch (in Arches National Park) was originally put online in early July of 2013. It was EarthSky’s image of the day for July 10th.
For me, this was a throwaway or “sketch” shot. I was pretty sure that this was the composition that I wanted, since I loved the leading lines of the sandstone bowl that led to the arch itself. What I wasn’t sure about was the periphery–I couldn’t really see anything at the edges of my frame through the viewfinder, so I took a handful of shots to see what my camera saw.
A couple closer to the arch (who was already there when I arrived) was shooting, so I did my best to stay out of there way. This is, or at least should be, a common courtesy among night photographers, within reason of course. (If they had shot uninterrupted for another half hour, I would’ve politely tried to work my way into their space.)
There had been a lull in the action as the couple pored over their photos on the back of their camera, so I set up another sketch shot and tripped my shutter. Just then, I heard him giving her instructions which amounted to “walk up to the arch and then shine the flashlight at it from below.” So she turned on the flashlight and walked up to the arch, just as he said.
At first, as I watched her walk up to the arch in the middle of my photo, I was a little annoyed, since I hadn’t really gotten a clean shot yet and was hoping to get one without extraneous lighting. But, at the same time, it was just a sketch photo, and they were there first.
As soon as I reviewed the image, though, I saw that her path up to the arch was arch-like itself. I made a mental note that the photo hadn’t been completely ruined and kept shooting.
This is part of the reason that I seldom, if ever, delete photos off my memory card in the field. I can’t imagine how disappointed I would’ve been had I decided to get rid of this photo in the spur of the moment because “she ruined my photo.”
The next day, after reviewing those images, I saw that not only had the image not been ruined, but that the woman’s path made the photo much more interesting to me. With the flashlight’s arc, a level of metaphorical meaning had been achieved. Additionally, the photo seemed to illustrate the magic of a long exposure–that random events (usually, moving lights) don’t necessarily ruin long exposures at night. In fact, they often add to the image.
I shot several photos of Delicate Arch with the same composition, but without any lighting. I like the photos and will probably post one sometime soon. But, to me, the addition of the flashlight and the human figure changed the photo’s entire meaning. This was no longer just a photo of one of the most-photographed sandstone arches in the southwestern United States. First off, it documented the process of night photography–it was a photo of a photo. Further, to me, the photo commented on the difficulty of escaping the “maddening crowds” in our national parks system. Even after a mile plus of night hiking near steep drop-offs.
A woman with a flashlight walks toward Delicate Arch, Arches National Park
I’ll admit it: I’ve done a terrible job of photographing the Oregon coast’s rare but spectacular starry nights. I realized this oversight mid-summer but was unable to correct it until September, when I headed to Astoria and Cannon Beach for some of the best night photography I had ever experienced. (You can see some of those images in my “Oregon coast” gallery.) Since then, I’ve bided my time, waiting for clear skies.
A recent super-cold snap provided such a night, and my friend Savya Saachi accompanied me to Newport, specifically to Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area. The temperatures weren’t extreme–maybe around 20 degrees or so–but the wind at the head was often brutal, and we both battled numb fingers and toes. The humidity was somewhere around 50%, and this may be the first time I’ve ever been out shooting in which I was hoping for higher humidity, so that the rays of the lighthouse would be better defined. Oh well. Next time.
This is a 5-image pano. (In other words, I should be able to print this thing HUGE.) I took a few exposures that I had intended to use to composite in a non-blown-out lighted area, but I decided against altering the photo after seeing the results. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get the end result to look natural. If the end result had either a) better represented reality or b) looked aesthetically pleasing, I would’ve been all over it. But, for me, it didn’t work. When I looked directly at the lighthouse while it was lit I didn’t see the finer details in the lens area, mostly because the thing was burning out my retinas.
A clear night at Yaquina Head, the Oregon coast. Andromeda makes its appearance at the top-middle of the photo.
As I’ve been writing this blog post, I’ve realized that I can’t possibly tell you how to light your foreground any better than I can tell you exactly what settings to use to get the perfect Milky Way photo every time. Every situation is unique and will have its own obstacles and solutions. This is one of the great things about night photography—so many variables exist that when you nail your shot it’s an unmistakable triumph. You’ve anticipated the factors that you can control, you’ve done a little trial-and-error experimentation to get you most of the way there, but the odds are that you’ve also gotten lucky, and the resulting photo is exciting. It’s magic.
What I can do is make you aware of why I like to light my foreground (which will come in the next section, The Rambling Preamble), and I can share a few things I’ve learned along the way. I can also let you know in advance about things to consider when lighting your foreground. This blog post is in no way a substitute, however, for good old fashioned experimentation, trial and error, and a little bit of luck.
The Rambling Preamble
If you’ve photographed the Milky Way at all, and you’ve driven far from the nearest city and you’ve waited for the new moon, you’ve probably noticed that it’s really dark outside. I mean, REALLY, dark, like “turn off your flashlight and walk straight into a ditch” dark—not that I would ever, ever know from personal experience.
If the stars of the Milky Way are the brightest part of your image (and not a streetlight, or a car’s headlights, or the light pollution of a distant city on the horizon), then you’re probably going to be left with a detail-less silhouette in the foreground.
I could write a whole blog post on adding foreground interest to astrolandscapes. It is, after all, the foreGROUND that makes an astrolandscape photo an astroLANDscape photo (notice my not-so-subtle selective capitalization). If you’re simply taking a picture of the stars, it’s astrophotography. Incorporate the land (or the ground) somehow, and you have an astrolandscape.
The Good (or Maybe Just Okay) Stuff
So let’s say you’re on board with the idea that a photograph of the night sky without something to ground it and give it context is just a snapshot of the stars—a completely flat, two-dimensional representation of something we already see in only two dimensions.
To add detail to your foreground, you have two options: First, you can take two exposures, one for the stars (a relatively short exposure of about 20-40 seconds) and one for the foreground. The problem with this method is that it involves making a composite image at a later date using photoshop, which can be difficult (although this method is the best way to deal with certain situations—that’s for another blog post, though). Also, if you’re shooting with very little or no ambient light, properly exposing for the foreground can take FOREVER if you’re using lower, less-noisy ISOs (especially if you have long-exposure noise reduction turned on in-camera, which will double your exposure time).
My preferred method is the second option, which I’ll be covering today: Getting your shot with a single exposure by lighting whatever foreground element you want with a flashlight or a flash.
If you’re shooting photos in the dark, you probably already have a flashlight. (If you don’t have a flashlight, you can probably see in the dark, which means you’re probably a cat, which means you’re going to have a really hard time setting up your tripod.)
Before we begin, here are a few things to consider as you survey your composition: First, is it desirable to light the foreground evenly? Is it even possible? Second, is it desirable to selectively light the foreground? And again, is it even possible based on your tools and your setting?
So let’s say I want to evenly light the foreground of an astrolandscape, lowering the overall contrast of my composition and filling in some details that would’ve previously been black shadow. One of the best ways to do this is with a relatively low-powered flashlight being swept quickly through the scene. Like I’ve mentioned before, I shoot a lot of astrolandscapes at around 3200 ISO with my aperture wide open, which means that I’ve rendered the sensor on my camera to be very, very sensitive to light. If I set my flashlight on high and blast my scene with it for anything more than two seconds (or maybe even less), I’m going to completely blow out the highlights, leaving the photo a big, white, weird mess (my high-school nickname!).
A lower amount of light (for a relatively short amount of time) gives you a better chance at even lighting and a lot more room for error before you start losing detail in your foreground.
When it comes to this kind of lighting, subtlety is the best policy. These are, after all, night photos, and people expect them to be sort of dark. Blasting away every shadow isn’t really necessary—in fact, it can be undesirable.
In this case, I used a flashlight with an incandescent bulb while standing next to the camera for 1-2 seconds on the wagon, then walked about 20 feet to the right to illuminate the house for 3-4 seconds.
Note that if you’re shooting at night and you’re stopped down and at a lower ISO (say, for an exposure of several minutes or more, or if the moon is full and also significantly lighting your composition), you may need to do quite a bit of painting with your flashlight in order for the lighting to be noticeable.
But let’s get back to landscape astrophotography, which is primarily done with high ISOs and wide-open apertures in very dark conditions. Problems arise when you can’t adjust or dim your flashlight. In this case, a flashlight diffusor might be warranted. There are several resources in the Internet on how to make one, on the cheap, at home. You can even buy diffusors for some brands of flashlight models (these are usually also fairly cheap—under $10).
The foreground of this shot was lit with an LED flashlight with a diffusor for several seconds, creating a nice, even lighting of the shipwreck’s hull.
A third option is to use a reflector to bounce light from your flashlight onto your scene. This is something I’ve been experimenting with more often, with mostly good results, as it provides very soft light (although, obviously, you’re limited as to the distance you can throw light). Reflectors are fairly cheap and light, and they fold up relatively small for easy transportation.
So let’s say you only want to illuminate a part of your foreground. (Or you want to illuminate the mid-ground, but not the foreground.) Things get a little trickier here. First off, you might want to think about getting a focusing flashlight, in which you can focus the beam so that it becomes a more direct point of light. Second, you may need to think about entering your scene so that you can get closer to the mid-ground object that you want to illuminate. At this point preparation is essential—you should be wearing dark clothing with nothing on it that will reflect light. If your complexion is like mine, you’ll want to cover as much of your skin as possible. You might also need a snoot for your flashlight that will further help to guide the light forward. It’s easy to make a snoot out of black electrical tape, although a jacket sleeve can also work.
Once you’re moving through your composition, you’ll need to move quickly and not hang out for too long in one place. And finally, you’ll need to consider whether or not you’ll want to shield the source of the light from the camera. (If you don’t, some weirdness can ensue—but weirdness is sometimes good, no?) In most cases, the easiest way to shield the source of light is with your body. Simply move through the frame with your back to the camera, keep the light in front of you, and paint with the flashlight in sweeping motions. Keep in mind that if the object you’re lighting is reflective, some part of you may show up in the exposure.
A note on the use of flashes
Hand-held strobes are a great way to illuminate elements of your foreground. On-board flashes (pop-up flashes) are almost always a great way to get your photo to suck, either in daylight or night photography. You can also add gels to your flash (or your flashlight, for that matter) that will provide a colored light, which can produce a dramatic effect. Being able to adjust the intensity of the flash or using a diffusor on your flash is also extremely helpful.
Keep in mind that flashes are difficult to focus, so to speak. They fill an area, and if they’re fired from only one direction they can produce dramatic shadows, which can be either good or bad, depending on the effect you’re seeking.
The green coloring was provided by a single pop with a green-gelled flash. The orange background is created by sodium-vapor lights diffused by fog.
A note on the types of flashlights available
I use one of two types of flashlights: one with an LED bulb, which renders the lit area a cool blue color, and one with an incandescent bulb, which renders the lit area a warmer, yellow-orange color. In my case, the LED-bulb flashlight is the more powerful of the two, and regardless of the tint of the light, I reach for the LED bulb when I need to illuminate something far off—say, more than 50 feet away.
There are, however, rather expensive spotlights with an incandescent beam much farther than my smaller, hand-held light. One problem I’ve encountered while using a spotlight (with either type of bulb) is overcooking the ground leading up to the object that I want to illuminate. For instance, if I’m trying to light up a windmill 100 feet away in the dark, the beam of light may fade enough after 100 feet that I need to hit the windmill for 4 seconds. However, the beam might be wide enough that the grass 40 feet in front of me gets hit with light and overexposes after about 2 seconds. Some of this can be corrected to an extent with burning in post-processing, but managing this problem in-camera with a more focused spotlight beam can make your life a lot easier.
A note on atmospheric conditions
As an Oregonian, I constantly run into problems with high humidity or mist (either from really high humidity in the air, for instance, at the coast, or from a waterfall nearby). Of course, humidity in the air will absorb and reflect light to an extent. The more powerful your beam, the more reflection you’ll get from humidity in the air. (Imagine driving your car in the fog with its high beams on.) This is yet another scenario in which a lower-power flashlight can be beneficial.
I inserted this shot to illustrate a) the uncorrected color of an LED flashlight and b) what happens when you shine a high-powered flashlight into really humid air.
The not-so-rambling ending
As you should in every type of photography, pay very close attention to the light. Know where you’re directing the light and how it affects the foreground of your compositions. Experiment with angles—see how lighting an object at a shallow angle can bring out surface textures. Look at how you can create lines of shadow in your composition that will lead the viewer’s eye.
Thanks again for checking out my blog and maybe even reading to the bitter end. I’m sure I’ve forgotten something important here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Okay, so if you’ve been following along you now know how to focus your camera in the dark. You also know WHERE to focus your camera in the dark in order to get maximum depth of field. Now, you’re asking, what are my settings so that I can capture those awesome images of the Milky Way, thus making me an overnight Internet hero?
We’ll get to that. First, let’s talk equipment: You have a DSLR camera, hopefully with live view. You have a wide or ultra-wide lens that is in focus for your shot. You will probably also need some sort of remote trigger for your shutter. You have a tripod.
Even more important than your equipment is your setting (not your camera settings, mind you, but your physical setting): You should have travelled far, far away from the nearest city lights. At least a hundred miles. Trust me on this. You can spend thousands of dollars on equipment, but if you’re not willing to find the darkest places around, your photos of the Milky Way will fail to thrive. Feed your Milky Way photos with total, pitch darkness. This also happens to mean you also need to wait for there to be no moon in the sky.
Wha? No moon? But, you ask, doesn’t that reduce the number of days that I could possibly take these types of photos to just a handful per month? Yep, pretty much. This is just one of those sad facts of life for landscape astrophotographers. It goes hand in hand with the fact that you can spend more on your camera than you did on your car and the camera will still produce noise at high ISOs. It also goes hand in hand with the fact that there are cougars in them thar woods. And they eat at night.
Cougars aside, the moon thing certainly complicates things, doesn’t it? What all good landscape astrophotographers do is study moon phases (no kidding). Look at when the moon rises and sets; do the same with the sun. Keep in mind that both bodies will affect the amount of light in the sky hours before and after they rise or set. Understand the orientation of the Milky Way and how it moves through the sky (more on this later). Understand that if you’re shooting part of the Milky Way that’s oriented west, and west happens to be the same direction as the nearest city, even if it’s 100 miles away, you very well may lose some detail in the Milky Way because of the city’s light pollution dome. Understand that if you wait several hours for the Milky Way to rotate north-northeastish, then you might have to contend with the predawn light of the sun (in the east). There are very few “happy accidents” in landscape astrophotography. The photos you see online are usually the result of a whole lot of research and planning.
Anyway, now that I’ve said my piece about dark skies, let’s review the three settings that we, as photographers, can use to control light: Shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. If we use the rule of 600, we know what our shutter speed is. For those of you who don’t know the rule of 600, it is the result of 600 divided by your focal length, in seconds. (Keep in mind that if you’re shooting on a crop sensor camera that you should be multiplying your focal length by the crop factor—for instance, on a Canon t4i that’s a 1.6x multiplier).
In order to gather as much light as possible, we’re also going to open our aperture up all the way. Later, in another blog, I’ll discuss when it’s appropriate to stop down a bit to sharpen up the image, but for now, let’s just assume we need to go wide open.
So our shutter speed has already been determined. Even our aperture has already been determined. The only other variable left is our ISO. This is really the only factor that you, as the beginner landscape astrophotographer, can control. Everything else is fixed.
So I’ll tell you the ISO setting I use most often: It’s 3200. I find that to be a very usable ISO for my particular camera. It’s a little noisy, but not so noisy that I can’t deal with the noise in post processing. And it’s sensitive enough to do a really good job exposing the Milky Way, allowing it to really light up and for us to see some of its different, subtle hues.
Your own experimentation should guide you to your own “correct” ISO. If you can handle the noise, by all means, go with 6400 or even higher. If you like a cleaner look, lower your ISO.
So there are my settings. But all technical talk aside, the absolute
most important aspect of Milky Way photography is getting to a dark place. If you live in the city (or even near a city) and you try those settings at night, you’ll quickly find out that what you’re really photographing is a whole bunch of yellowish-orangish light emanating from the city itself. It’s depressing, really, but it’s the truth.
In the photo of Crater Lake below, the orangish glow near the horizon is light pollution from Klamath Falls, Oregon, a city of 20,000 residents about 70 miles away from Crater Lake. If you were in doubt about the insidiousness of light pollution, there’s your evidence. Now just imagine how much orange glow a city 10 or 100 times that size emits. Now imagine the city being 35 miles away instead of 75 miles.
The bottom line: You now know the settings, but you have to escape the city lights to make your Milky Way star photography shine. Until next time, photo-friends!
My last blog on focusing in the dark was kind of a primer, so now we’re going to dive into something a little more advanced. So unbuckle your camera bag, extend your tripod legs, and hang on tight—we’re about to dive into (insert echochamber voice) HYPERFOCAL DISTANCES…Distances…distances…distances…
To keep this discussion clear, I’d like to define a couple of terms below.
•Landscape astrophotography: Landscape photography that also features one or more elements of the night sky (stars, shooting stars, the moon, aurora borealis).
•Fast lens: A lens with a particularly wide aperture.
•Fixed focal length lens/prime lens: A lens that doesn’t zoom.
•Wide lens: A lens wider than about 28mm or so.
•Native ISO: The ISO at which your camera was designed to take photos. For Canons, this would be ISO 100.
•Shooting wide open: Opening your lens’s aperture as wide as possible (to its lowest f-stop number)
•Stopping down: Narrowing your lens’s aperture
So by now you have a few tools in your metaphorical tool belt, the last tool added being your ability to focus your camera in the dark. Hopefully, by now, finding your focus this way feels natural. Let’s go ahead and assume at this point that you’re a fairly dedicated landscape astrophotographer, which means that you’ve invested in a wide and fast prime lens. (I know that I haven’t exactly delved into this topic before, but a wide and fast prime lens is a fairly essential tool for the type of landscape astrophotography in which you “freeze” the movement of the stars in the sky.)
Sharpness is a fairly important aspect of photography, particularly in landscapes in which you’re seeking maximum depth of field (ie, you want everything in your image to be in focus). Your photo has to be sharp if you want to print it large (and who wouldn’t want to do that?). Landscape astrophotography is much the same way, except that sharpness is even more important. Why? Because many landscape astrophotos require high ISOs, and noise reduction is a critical part of post-processing. What happens during noise reduction? Well, sharpness is sacrificed in favor of a “cleaner” or more noise-free image.
Whereas a soft photo at a camera’s native ISO can be sharpened to make it more acceptable, sharpening a high-ISO image (like in landscape astrophotography) only adds to the noise in an already noisy image. In short, you don’t want to do it. (I’ll delve more into post-processing techniques for my landscape astrophotography some other time.)
So sharpness is critically important, and that means getting it right in the field since we may not be able to sharpen it up much in post. If you only want the stars for your image to be in focus and don’t care about your foreground, that’s a fairly easy scenario: just focus on the stars. But that’s not exactly landscape astrophotography, is it?
So we’re going to create a make-believe scenario, and in this make-believe scenario, you’ve discovered, while hiking, the most awesome tree ever, miles away from anywhere, and it’s begging you to take its picture beneath the starry night sky. Further, you’ve decided that in order to make the most effective composition, you need for both the tree (with its super cool gnarly trunk and twisted branches) and the stars above to be in focus.
If you use the ol’ landscape photography rule of thumb “focus one-third of the way into your scene,” you might get a little confused—after all, what’s one-third of the way into your scene when the background is millions of miles away? Using this rule, you might find that your stars are in focus, but the Most Awesome Tree Ever is still out of focus. Worse yet, the Most Awesome Tree Ever (henceforth: MATE) might look like it’s in focus on the back of your camera, and you might not notice that the MATE is soft until you zoom in at 100% while you’re post-processing at home the next day. But by then you’ve hiked out of the place where the MATE lived, and the notes you made in your hiking journal are gone because you accidentally lit your hiking journal on fire with your camp stove while you were absentmindedly talking to your buddy about whether you’ll make next month’s front cover of both National Geographic and Outdoor Photographer, or just National Geographic. And now you can’t remember where that tree was, exactly.
So where does that leave us? How can we reliably know for sure that everything in the shot will be in focus when we’re so often fooled by the tiny, awesome images on the backs of our cameras? Hyperfocal distances and depth of field calculators.
In the olden days, this might’ve involved pulling out a rather large chart, turning on your flashlight, and cross-referencing a couple of figures—all in the field. Nowadays, there are smart-phone apps that can give you this info in the field. How awesome is that? Let’s all take a moment to pat ourselves on the back for living in the digital age. Of course, whipping out your phone still involves adding an artificial light to the scene, killing your night vision, and, if you’re out shooting with a buddy, creating a light that may or may not end up in someone else’s photo.
So here’s what I do: Since I shoot my night shots with two different fixed focal length lenses at one of two or three apertures, I simply memorize the hyperfocal distance most applicable to my particular situation.
For instance, if I’m out with my full-frame camera and my 14mm lens, I know that if I shoot wide open (f/2.8), I can focus 8 feet in front of me, and everything from about 4 feet in front of me to INFINITY will be in focus. How I do I know that? Check out this handy hyperfocal distance calculator online. Cherish that link. It’s magic.
So let’s say I’m shooting on my Canon t3i (a crop sensor camera) with my kit lens, which has a maximum aperture of f/3.5. If I’m shooting wide open (at f/3.5), I need to focus about 16 feet in front of me to ensure that everything about 8 feet in front of me to infinity is in focus. This means that as long as I place the MATE (remember the MATE?) at least 8 feet away from me, I’m golden. The tree is in focus, the stars are in focus, life is good, and I won all photography forever.
This, my friends, is the magic of hyperfocal distances. If you want to, you can trust the “infinity” symbol on your lens (if your lens even has an infinity symbol), but be warned: your lens’s focus can change with the ambient temperature (if it was even correct to begin with coming from the manufacturer). In a certain temperature, that infinity symbol might be dead on. In a radically different temperature, you might not be in focus. Why risk it?
Personally, I’ve memorized the applicable hyperfocal distances for two of my lenses. I don’t need apps, and I don’t need charts. And the great thing about these principles is that they translate perfectly well to standard, daylight landscape photography too. The only difference is that, when you stop down to an aperture that isn’t wide open (as you hopefully would when not shooting star photos), you 1) bring the near limit of acceptable sharpness even closer and 2) you probably create an even sharper photo, since not all apertures are equal when it comes to sharpness. But I’ll get more into that second part in another blog post…..
Until next time, may the clouds part and the stars shine on, my friends!
Without fail, the first problem that most photographers encounter when trying their hand at low-light or night photography is an inability to focus. After all, they’re used to autofocus, and their gear has likely been doing much of the focus work for the photographer up till now. As a general rule for night photography, I completely forget that my camera and lens can autofocus. I flip the switch to manual, and I don’t look back. There’s something about the endless whirring of a lens’s autofocus hunting that drives me crazy—it’s like a tiny voice from your camera whispering, “Psssst! Hey! This photo’s going to suck!”
So, step 1: I turn off autofocus.
For step 2, I’m going to assume you’re shooting on a DSLR with live view. For those of you on a DSLR without live view, I feel your pain. I did a fair amount of night photography on a first-generation digital Rebel, and it was very, very difficult. But times have changed and cameras have evolved, so I’m guessing that you probably have live view on your camera. If so, turn it on. The LCD on the back of your camera is probably still black, albeit with a few glowing symbols around the display’s periphery.
Next, I’m going to assume you’re using a tripod. After all, it’s only about 100% necessary when shooting at night. (Unless you’re engaging in a form of light painting called “camera painting,” in which you move your camera while shooting stationary lights during a long exposure.) While your camera is securely mounted on its tripod, find an object in the foreground that you think should be in focus. Illuminate this object with your flashlight. Can you now see this object on your LCD? If not, you may need to illuminate it with something brighter (one of the best night photography investments I ever made was in a brutally powerful, pocket-sized flashlight—I’ve actually driven down rural gravel roads, waving it out the window like a spotlight while looking for interesting scenes to photograph).
If you’re using a bright flashlight on the object and you still can’t see anything on your LCD, this is when I do one of two things: first, I check to make sure I took off my lens cap. If the lens cap is off, I check to make sure that my 10-stop neutral density filter is not currently on that lens. (Both of these scenarios occur with surprising frequency. And they’re both kind of embarrassing.) If you still can’t see anything on your LCD, and you’ve turned on live view, have no filters on your lens, your lens cap is off, and you’re using a powerful flashlight on an object in the foreground, then there’s a strong possibility that there’s something wrong with your camera. Please see my earlier condolences for those photographers who are shooting on a digital camera without live view. Now extend those condolences to yourself, on my behalf.
Step 5? 11?: Zoom in on the object that you’re illuminating in your foreground. On a Canon camera, this is accomplished by using buttons with magnifying glasses and + or – symbols on them. Zoom in as far as you can. Holding your flashlight in one hand, use your other hand to manually focus your lens on the object. Get your focus super sharp, then zoom out, and, if you want, turn off live view. You’ve found your focus for that particular photograph.
However, sometimes there is no object in the foreground. Or, at least, anything with any real detail is too far away to light with your flashlight while focusing your camera. In this case, what I like to do is create an object in my foreground by putting my own flashlight there, and pointing it back at the camera. In some cases, if your flashlight is too bright and rendering your live view display into a giant amorphous blob of light, you can place the flashlight at about a 45-degree angle so that it’s not pointing directly at your camera.
Other options include taking off your ball cap and placing it in the foreground, going back to your camera, and then shining your flashlight on your ball cap to find the focus. (Note: A baseball cap is a handy night photography accessory that can shield the side of your lens from undesirable lighting that causes lens flare, temporarily cover the front of your lens should something unexpected happen in the middle of your long exposure, or cover the eyepiece of your camera if you’re worried about light leaking into the eyehole. In short, a dark ball cap is just about standard night photography gear, and you should really think about owning one.)
Other objects that you can focus on at night using live view include the moon, stars or other celestial objects, streetlights, the edges of a backlit object obscuring a light source—in short, any light source you can find can help you out.
Some photographers don’t bother with focusing in the dark at all. In the warmth and well-lit comfort of their home, before they even leave, they find their focus and then tape the focus ring in place with gaffer’s tape. Personally, this seems like a desperate move to me, as throwing sticky tape on any part of my camera or lens gives me the creeps. But if you absolutely cannot find your focus in the dark (maybe you don’t have live view), than it’s probably not a bad way to go. It’s certainly better than taking a bunch of blurry photos.
Milky Way photos
