I'm clearly doing something wrong - milky way attempt

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Gareth Jones
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hi,

i bought myself a sayang 14mm 2.8 some time ago and haven't really had the chance to get out and use it until tonight, fortunately no moon tonight but clouds rolling by i spotted a clear spell and ran to the darkest spot locally to me (middle of a field) i had already pre focused on something far away so i set up and managed to grab some shots through the gaps in the clouds but I'm not happy with the results especially seeing some posted in here by other members.

Can you help me get this right? settings: iso 6400 14mm 2.8 30 seconds on a canon 6d this is an attempt:


poor attempt at milky way by garethjones206, on Flickr
 
If your main issue is with the lack of Stars. My first response would be there is too much light pollution.
 
I'm not sure what the problem is, i have seen a video on lonely speck where he's in a really bad light polluted spot and he gets way better results than i did tonight. I guess my main gripe is that it just doesn't look anything like other milky way shots I've seen i.e no colours or definition in the middle - maybe I'm not pointing high enough/wrong direction
 
The brightest area of the Milky Way is now just about out of sight below the horizon, although what is visible still looks kind of washed out....as HuntingMartians said, it does appear that there is a lot of light pollution in that direction! It doesn't matter that you're in the middle of dark field if you're looking at the Milky Way above a large town/city, as appears to be the case here with that intense light at the bottom right of the picture. Also, generally, Milky Way shots need a lot of processing to bring the best out of them...I can see a bit of a halo around the tree but did you do much to the sky itself? Finally, 30 seconds at 6400 with the bright lights in the background may mean you have overexposed the sky slightly and lost some star detail....I know if I try 30 seconds at 6400 on my D750, I start to lose some stars! If you have a link to the raw file, would you mind if I had a quick look (no worries if you'd prefer not to :) )?
 
This was taken a couple of nights ago with a 6D ISO 3200, 25s, f2.8. I had to process it quite heavily to get this result. As others have said there is probably too much light polution, especially if there is some cloud around to reflect the light.

MilkyWay (1) by TheWub, on Flickr
 
sirch said:
This was taken a couple of nights ago with a 6D ISO 3200, 25s, f2.8. I had to process it quite heavily to get this result. As others have said there is probably too much light polution, especially if there is some cloud around to reflect the light.

MilkyWay (1) by TheWub, on Flickr
Click to expand...

I think the light pollution is fine :).
Probably just shows up more as there is some lowish whispy clouds?
 
Could you actually see the Milky Way? Looking at the exif on flickr it says it was taken just after 2200. Is that GMT or BST and is it correct, as that sky looks like the sun's barely set. It looks like you have severe light pollution all along the horizon and are those more bright lights below the hill to the left? It's hard to tell what they are. If you have light pollution that bad any cloud or even haze in the sky will make it even worse as the light is scattered everywhere. As Chris says, you need to do quite a bit of processing, but only if you have a decent shot to start with.
 
I suspect the main issue is that it is overexposed. Once the stars are fully exposed, exposing for longer cannot make them brighter it just makes everything else brighter including light pollution reflected by the atmosphere. I would also guess this is why there is no colour in the stars, the have all become fully saturated to white.
 
hey thanks all for the replies!

yes i could se it, it was faint but definitely there, i have shots from earlier at 4k iso but too many clouds in the way to see anything i guess ill just chalk this up to experience and next time stay lower on the ISO and go further afield for the darker clearer skies although my problem is every time i have travelled somewhere dark it clouds up typically :) hence the reason this lens hasn't had a real outing yet.

i can make the file available if you wanted to have a go but where is a good place to share it for free?
 
I think there's light pollution affecting it and your ISO is too high for the ambient light levels. Also with the 400 rule you can go to 28secs but I limit it to 25 secs as at 30 secs you have trailing in your shot.

f2.8, ISO4000, 15 secs, samyang 14mm on Nikon D750 in the Brecons.

DSC_5282 by Martin Coomer, on Flickr
 
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