After many months of waiting for a good clear night with no moon I finally managed to get myself over to Fairfield and get the shot that I have been wanting to do for ages. I had seen a few Milky Way photos from this location before and I really wanted to have one on my own.
This is how it went.
After about 2 hours of sleep my alarm woke me up at midnight, I grabbed my bag and a thermos full of coffee and I was on my way to Fairfield. Having recently acquired a new toy ( the star tracker everyone is crazy about called Move Shoot Move) I was really keen to try it out for the first time. The first thing I really liked about it is how portable and lightweight it was (For those unfamiliar with what star tracker is, it is a device that fits on a tripod and rotates the camera at the same speed as the Earth, just in the opposite direction, allowing it to capture detailed and sharp images of stars through long exposure photography)
I was a little nervous about using the laser having previously googled if it was legal to have one ( it is as I found out, as long as you don't point it at people, cars or airplanes which could lead to some serious trouble) and its potential of destroying any camera in seconds if you pointed the beam at it. Yup, never ever do that! It will destroy the sensor.
Having located the North Star in the sky I pointed the laser at it and was surprised how powerful it was! It took me less than a minute to align it with Polaris and then I carefully placed the camera on the tripod trying not to knock it over as this would ruin the alignment and result would be streaky stars.
First picture, just like first pancake is not the best so I let the device warm up a bit before I took the final tracked image of the Milky Way.
Settings used:
ISO 500
f/2.8
200 s
Gear used:
Nikon Z6 II
20mm 1.8
MoveShootMove
6-point Star Filter
I checked the histogram and I was happy with how the RAW image was looking on the screen, the Milky Way looked so distinctive and I was already very excited to get home and process it on my pc. That's Milky Way shot done!
Foreground & Processing
Nightscape photography with star tracker requires two separate photos. One of the sky and one of the foreground. The tracker literally moves your camera to follow the stars everything else will be a bit blurry and you need to take a separate sharp photo of your foreground and blend it with the sharp photo of the stars ( composite image). I use Photoshop to blend two images together and most of the time for this task I use the very simple Sky Replacement tool which automatically merges my two photos together and 9/10 it does it perfectly!
My foreground picture was taken afterwards during blue hour and the glow from the pre sunrise sky gently lit up the church for me. Perfect light painting with natural light!
Foreground settings:
ISO 500
f/5
67 s
Really happy with the result, it exceeded my expectations and I can't wait to have it printed & framed and added to my collection.
