Photograph the Milky Way in just 5 minutes!
Wednesday 8 January 2020, 20:02 by Michelle Peeters | 6,417 views | 2 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
Photographing the Milky Way is on most photographers' bucket lists. This video covers the basics to help you do it in less than five minutes.
One of my goals over the past year was to go to a really dark location with little or no light pollution and photograph the stars or even the Milky Way.
I have already managed it in the United Kingdom, near the border with Scotland where you can find a Dark Sky Park. And then again in Nepal, where there is also little or no light pollution in many places.
In this video from Lonely Speck, a fantastic source for astrophotography that is definitely worth checking out, Ian Norman and Diana Southern take you through some basic principles for capturing the Milky Way in all its glory. Unless you live in Namibia, finding a really dark location is one of the most important tips on this list.
Another tip could be to bring clothing and hot drinks, because the temperature in a dark location in the middle of nowhere can often drop considerably in the middle of the night. Even in England, I noticed that I was often visibly shivering while I waited for the exposure to finish.
I found it eye-opening that you can see the entire core of the Milky Way between March and November. And that, if you want to set your lens to infinity, you can do this with Canon lenses by turning the focusing ring all the way to the left. With Nikon, it is exactly the other way around, all the way to the right.
If you have any more tips for photographing the Milky Way, let us know in the comments!
About the author
Michelle Peeters is fotografe en oprichter van DeuxBleus Fotografie. Michelle herkent het bijzondere in het gewone en het gewone in het bijzondere. Ze heeft zich nooit willen specialiseren en is daardoor van alle markten thuis.
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2 comments
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Ab Kasper wrote on Tuesday 14 January 2020 at 14:02 | replyThere are a number of Canon lenses where, when you turn all the way to the end, you have already passed the "sharp at infinity" point. The result is a starry sky in which all the stars are rendered as a small glowing dot. Not really beautiful. It is better to focus manually, preferably on Liveview) on a light source far away and then not touch the focusing ring anymore.
Translated from Dutch. -
Michelle Peeters wrote on Tuesday 14 January 2020 at 14:05
| reply
@Ab: that's true and that's also my own experience. But if that 'light source far away' isn't there, this is a handy emergency solution, I thought!
Translated from Dutch.
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