Have a look at the amazing imagery of the Milky Way. And the personal account of the wonderful photographer Saurabh A Chatterjee. This feature indeed a guide to photography enthusiasts.
It was about 10 years ago, during a high altitude Himalayan trek I woke up in the middle of the night and went outside of my tent. Being away from the city with no light pollution, I could see millions of stars. As I scanned from horizon to horizon, I saw this very bright band of stars. With colours ranging from turquoise, to blue, green, red and orange, it looked so heavenly.
Surprisingly, I could identify a dark horse with a very bright star near its mouth. With whatever knowledge I had, I took a shot.
That was the first time I saw the Milky Way. There has been no looking back since then.
Location
The most important factor is to identify the location where I would find dark skies. If you want great Milky Way pictures, there has to be minimal light and air pollution.
So basically, go out of the cities to places which have less or no habitation.
One of the best places to shoot the Milky Way is the Himalayas where you get dark skies. I absolutely love shooting the night skies in Ladakh and Spiti Valley. They have some of the darkest skies in India.
I use darksitefinder.com to find the suitable locations. This website uses an overlay on Google Maps and with the use of colour codes, helps us identify the areas which are suitable to shoot. You can search for your city on the map and identify areas around where you can go.
When to go?
Once I identify the place, the next factor is when to go?
There are some times of the year when the Milky way rises right after sunset and continues to be visible for a long time.
For example, June and July is the best time of the year to shoot this in the Himalayas (or in most places in the Northern Hemisphere) when the Milky Way rises right after sunset and the visibility is there till early morning.
Any kind of light can impair the visibility of the Milky Way.
Even if you go to the darkest places, the light from the moon can affect the visibility of the Milky Way. You have to shoot when the moon is not visible, so either before moonrise or after moonset. You can go to timeanddate.com to find the moon calendar.
Composition
Composition is the most critical factor that can make or break your image.
The Milky Way looks almost identical whenever you shoot. It’s the foreground elements that makes a difference.
Ansel Adams said – A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
Every time, I want some new and interesting foreground. For this, we have to scout for the locations or take something different in the same location. This takes some effort. I rarely do the same composition that I have done before, so it becomes more challenging.
Sometimes, you can make the foreground (like foliage) visible, and I also use a torch to ‘paint’ it.
I use an app called Photopills to help me plan my composition. It has an impressive feature of ‘Augmented Reality’ which helps me find the time the Milky way will be visible in my compositions.
Let me explain how it works. Suppose I want the Milky Way between two mountains to make a perfect composition. I want to know what time it will be positioned there. Using this app, when I point my camera to the mountains and move a slider representing the time, I will actually be able to see the Milky Way moving as an overlay over the mountains. This helps me plan my shot well, so I don’t have to wait all night.
Motivation
In the Himalayas, the places where we go to shoot are located at high altitudes (about 14000 feet above sea level). Our body starves for oxygen at this altitude, so don’t over-exert yourself.
Also the low temperatures and wind makes it more challenging. So, you have to keep yourself motivated.
Warm clothing is a must. You also have to keep yourself hydrated by drinking enough water.
Equipment
Camera – Any DSLR is capable enough to shoot the Milky Way, however having a full frame camera will help you get more details because of better noise performance.
Lens – To start with, you can use a 18-55mm lens. I suggest using a wide-angle lens like 14mm on a full-frame sensor to capture as much as possible.
Also, having a lens with an aperture of 2.8 or wider allows more light coming in, which will help you to shoot at lower ISO.
Tripod
You definitely need a sturdy and stable tripod.
Other Important Accessories:
Remote Release
I use a wired shutter release remote control, so I don’t have to depend on batteries. Although it can be controlled using a phone, again battery can be an issue.
Head Torch
Always carry a head torch, so that it’s easy to navigate in the dark. Having a torch with an infrared light helps a lot as it does not impair your night vision.
GPS – GPS
Yes, this is a must have to find your orientation.
Cellphone
A phone will help you use applications that are very helpful to plan your shot.
Shutter Speed
Ideally, we would like to shoot at the lowest ISO, to get least noise, but there is a limit to the longest shutter speed we can use. This is very critical because beyond that, the stars will lose their shape and will start forming trails.
To find the right shutter speed you have to follow the rule of 500.
Your shutter speed = 500/focal length
For example, if your focal length is 15mm, your shutter speed should be 500/15 is 33.33 seconds.
If you are using a crop sensor camera, consider your crop factor and the effective focal length.
Aperture
Choose the widest open aperture (f/2.8 in this case) to allow maximum light to enter, which will allow us to minimise the ISO.
This also means that the depth of field reduces if you have some foreground element very close to the camera.
The workaround is to take a separate picture for the foreground and blend it later in Photoshop.
ISO
ISO can vary based on the location. I keep it between 2500 to 4500.
In the camera, I put my long exposure noise reduction set to Off and High ISO Noise Reduction to Normal.
A lot of people use image stacking for Noise Reduction. It requires taking several shots at lower ISOs and stack them to get less noise. You have to consider it is worth the effort.
I do the noise reduction part in Lightroom and it works quite well.
White Balance
I generally keep the White Balance to Auto and tweak it later in post processing. Since I shoot in the RAW format, it’s very easy to do so. For star trails, however, having a fixed manual WB is highly recommended. In some cameras, the WB changes with every picture, so better to choose any White Balance to keep it uniform across all the pictures.
Focussing
Manual Focus only
Because of very less contrast, there is no way that the AF will work. So, the only choice is Manual Focus.
Some lenses have an Infinity symbol marking. I recommend it to put it to a little less than infinity. For lenses where infinity is not marked (like the 18-55 kit lens), for a Canon, you can rotate the focusing ring to a little less than the left most extreme. For a Nikon, its a little less than the rightmost extreme. Sometimes you need to do a little trial and error.
The other way to focus is to use the Live View, zoom in to maximum and focus manually on a bright star by adjusting the focus ring to get it perfect.
Creating a Panorama
Sometimes, I want to shoot much wider than the angle of view of my lens. In that case, I take several vertical shots and stitch them later. When you are doing a panorama, make sure you have roughly a 30% overlap between two frames. That will enable the software to make a seamless composition.
Stitching pano shots is very easy in Adobe Lightroom.
Image Stabilization / Vibration Reduction
If you are using a lens with IS/VR, remember to switch it off as this can cause shaky pictures.
Exposure Delay
Even the flipping up of the mirror can cause vibrations and can spoil the picture. I use Exposure Delay Mode in my Nikon cameras, so the mirror flips up before the actual exposure starts. This eliminates the chance of any vibration caused by the mirror movement.
Shooting in RAW
Shooting in RAW file format is very critical to get the most out of your picture.
Processing
I used Adobe Lightroom Classic and Adobe Photoshop to process my pictures.
My first step is to identify the best shot and then put all my efforts to make the picture look great.
I process one picture first for the exposure, contrast, clarity and dehaze and then the Noise Reduction to reduce the noise.
For creating a Panorama, select the pictures for the pano in Lightroom and then Photo -> Photomerge -> Panorama. The software will do all the hard work and bring you the result.
Finally, there was some tweaking to the final image to get this output.
To get the optimum dynamic range, you can also take this processed image to Photoshop and work on the layers.
Bonus Tip
It can be extremely annoying when your shutter is open and someone switches on a torch and spoils the picture. To avoid doing this, do this exercise –
I advise you to feel your camera like a blind person and change the settings. If you can do this, it will be really very helpful to change the settings without any torch.
Saurabh is a travel and documentary photographer. His dream is to ‘see India’ and to make every camera-owner a great photographer. He is the Founder and Chief Educator at SIA Photography. He organizes Photography tours and Photo walks in different regions of India and around.
Since 2011, he has trained more than 6000 people across the globe through his Photography Workshops, Photowalks and Photo-tours and online sessions. He has written over 200 travel articles for various magazines and newspapers.
Blog – https://siaphotography.in/blog/
Instagram – https://instagram.com/saurabhchatterje
Facebook – https://facebook.com/saurabhchatterje