Amateur photographer Santiago Olay has an interesting day job: he works as a deck officer on a 280m cargo ship. But when he's not busy with his duties, often late at night, he goes out on deck tries to photograph the Milky Way from the middle of the ocean.
My name is Jason De Freitas (@jase.film on Instagram), and I'm an analog photographer based in Australia. In this article, I'll share how I shoot the Milky Way from my backyard on medium format film.
A couple of days ago, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled a plan to help keep the company's thousands of Starlink satellites from becoming a very noticeable blight on the night sky, a complaint we've heard from astronomers and astrophotographers alike.
With many of us stuck in lockdown, quarantine, and self-isolation, I thought I’d share 10 ideas for astrophotography that you can do from home, even if you live in a light-polluted town or city. If there’s one thing that this pandemic has taught us, it’s that we’re all in this together and astrophotography and astronomy only help to solidify that sense of unification.
Paris-based artist Roman Hill explores the microscopic world as a way to capture the immensity of the universe. His latest short film, titled As Above, looks like a mesmerizing display of cosmic gasses, stars, and galaxies, but it was shot on a tabletop.
If you're getting into astrophotography, the telescope manufacturer Celestron has published a helpful "celestial calendar" to give you a heads up of notable things you'll see in the night sky through the end of 2020.
Astrophotographer Ian Norman of Lonely Speck recently got his hands on a Google Pixel 4 XL for testing, so he took it out to Joshua Tree National Park to see how well the "Astrophotography Mode" on this smartphone compares to shooting with a "real" camera.
Singapore is known to be the most light-polluted city on Earth, so it's not exactly the go-to destination for astrophotography. But there are talented astrophotographers working on the island city-state, and this 3-minute documentary titled "Galactic Paint" is about one of them.
Kenko Tokina's filter and accessory brand Hoya has released a new filter for night sky photographers. It's called the "Starscape Light Pollution Cut Filter," and it's meant to reduce the yellow and greenish color cast caused by city lights when you're trying to capture the stars.
Breaking the rules and thinking outside the box is something a photographer should always try. You start your journey with photography capturing everything interesting you see, jumping from one genre to the other until you find your favorite style.
For several years I had believed that shooting a medium format camera at high ISO would yield terrible results. Most likely there would be no point in trying, I thought. However, a few days ago I nevertheless brought the Pentax 645Z and the Pentax 25mm f/4 out into the darkness where the zoombies reign — in my imagination anyway.
Let's say I would like to enhance the stars in this Milky Way landscape photo. I could load the image into Camera Raw and add some Clarity at the risk of adding noise and artifacts to the night sky. Another way of doing it could be to use “Select Color Range” combined with a curves or levels adjustment. However, I often find that these methods don't yield satisfactory results.
My Huawei P30 Pro arrived at 4:30 pm on April 6th, and I knew the night sky in Mersing would be amazing for me to try out this low-light beast. I had read a lot of good reviews on P30 Pro, but I was still skeptical, so I booked a room at my regular resort on the same day and drove 3 hours to get there.
A couple of weeks ago I was blessed with a sight that truly left me in a state of awe. Shortly after leveling off onboard United 534 from Honolulu to Los Angeles, I tried my luck with some astrophotography over the crisp Pacific Ocean skies.
Before we get started, it's essential to understand that astrophotography takes time and practice in order to achieve good results, so don't get frustrated if you don't nail it on the first go.
People ask me all the time how I get my night shots with the stars, so I made a video on the subject. Here are my 7 tips for crushing night photography.
I’m an avid night sky photographer that cut my teeth capturing the stars using the original Canon 6D. I shot with that camera for years until purchasing the Sony a7S (Mark I) after reading about how it could essentially “see in the dark.”
I have captured photos of stars above distant thunderstorms before, but I never imagined I would be able to capture the Milky Way above a nearby thunderstorm. While out storm chasing in Eastern Montana on June 4, 2018, that's exactly what happened.
Photographer and astronomer Juan Carlos Munoz was browsing a flea market in Santiago, Chile, a few days ago when he stumbled across some crystal balls. He bought one for a few dollars and then decided to use it for astrophotography. This "cosmic marble" photo of the Milky Way in a crystal ball is what resulted.
NASA's newest planet-hunting satellite has captured its first photograph -- a dazzling one that shows over 200,000 stars.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was deployed on April 25, 1990, so this week marked the 28th anniversary of the telescope providing humankind with breathtaking photos of deep space. To celebrate, NASA released this 30-second video that zooms into the Milky Way's central bulge to a new photo just released of the Lagoon Nebula over 4,000 light years away.
Here's a light-painting photo shoot that Star Wars fans may appreciate: photographer Dominic Chiu visited the world's largest salt flat and shot a series of photos showing a lightsaber duel under the reflected starry night sky.
What would New York City look like at night if there were no light pollution to shroud the stars? That's what this new 3-minute short film titled SKYGLOW NYC aims to answer.
Photographer and filmmaker Elia Saikaly has released a new time-lapse short film titled, Everest. It's a dazzling look at the beauty of the world's highest mountain at night.
Photographer Jonathan Usher of Wellington, New Zealand, recently created this photo of the Milky Way rising from the horizon near his city. But get this: he wasn't using a tripod or any other stabilization -- not even a rock. It's a "60-second exposure" shot handheld.
Here's a 24-minute tutorial by photographer Ian Norman of Lonely Speck that looks at how you can stack and stitch panoramas of the night sky. Norman says these are his two favorite techniques for maximizing the image quality of astrophotos.
Here's a 10-minute video from Nature TTL that looks at the best lens for star photography. Comparing the Sigma 14mm f/1.8 lens with the Rokinon 14mm f/2.4 and f/2.8 lenses, photographer Matthew Saville says that each has its place in the astrophotography world.
This 10-minute tutorial by nature photography site Nature TTL teaches how to create a day to night time-lapse from sunset to a starry night sky. While it can be a tricky technique to pull off, the effects can be totally mesmerizing if done correctly.
The night has fallen. I am alone, on top of a mountain, at an altitude of 3,000 meters (~9,800 feet). Fog is floating along through the valleys below, illuminated by the pale light of the moon. For a moment I feel like I've landed on a distant planet, lost in space. It's a privilege to be here, a refreshment of the soul.
Here's a beautiful new short film by time-lapse photographer Tyler Hulett of Discover Oregon. Titled "Oregon Trails," it shows stacked star trails swirling over the beautiful landscapes of Oregon.
I've seen a lot of posts and comments raving about how f/1.8 on a 14mm lens is revolutionary for anyone wanting to shoot astrophotography. Yes, having a larger aperture will collect more light, but you're still limited in the exposure length because of the Earth's rotation.
After doing an astrophotography shoot and zooming in on the stars, and you may find digital noise spoiling the scene. Removal in Lightroom can result in less color in the cosmos, but using a piece of software called Starry Landscape Stacker software can make the final output much better.
Photographer Adam Makarenko has a portfolio filled with space photos that look like they were shot by NASA probes. But each of the planets and alien landscapes was actually made by hand and then carefully photographed.
Finding razor-sharp focus when shooting astrophotography can be hard – stars appear as point light sources, and there are no detailed surfaces to aid the eye in achieving focus. The Bahtinov Mask is a widely used tool that cleverly uses diffraction as a focusing aid.
If you point your camera at the sky and film, the stars will arc overhead. That’s because your camera is attached to a giant spinning orb called Earth. This interesting 24 hour time-lapse from YouTuber AlphaPhoenix stabilises the stars by spinning the footage in the opposite direction to Earth’s rotation.
Sony recently released firmware v.4.0 for its a7S II and a7R II mirrorless cameras. The announcement that this firmware version “Improves image quality when Long Exposure NR setting is off” raised hopes for many photographers that Sony had at last addressed the issues caused by their automatic smoothing of all exposures of 4 seconds or longer, sometimes referred to as the "Star Eater" effect because of the way that it removes stars in astrophotography images.
I recently captured this 8-second handheld photo of the Milky Way from my seat in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplane. Here's a look at how it was done.
Shooting the night sky can produce amazing images of endless starry skies, but it can be challenging to those used to working with plenty of light. This 15-minute beginner’s guide from Josh Katz teaches the key elements of astrophotography, and how to capture the sky even in sub-optimal conditions.
Mike Mezuel II puts on workshops at Big Bend National Park in Texas for photographers who want to learn best to photograph the night sky. In this 5-minute video, follow along as Mike leads his students out on a shoot beneath the dazzling night sky over Texas.
Instead of sleeping last Tuesday night, Baltimore-based photographer Aryeh Nirenberg decided to drive 3 hours to Assateague Island off the coast of Maryland and spend the night under the stars with his Sony a7S II. This dazzling 42-second, 4K time-lapse is what resulted.