today I'll show you seven things that you need to successfully photograph the
Milky Way
as the core of the Milky Way becomes more visible at nighttime you might want
to go out and try and take a photograph of it where I live I've got another
month before the core becomes visible at night
normally the Milky Way season starts around April and runs right through
until about September so I'm just giving you a checklist of things that you need
whether you might want to put on your shopping list before the season starts
some of these are essential and some of these are optional but the more that you
have the better your photographs will be and the easier you'll find it to take
those photographs obviously you'll need a camera to do this some cameras are
better than others but if you know the principles of shooting the Milky Way you
can even get good shots with a point-and-shoot like this I use the Sony
a7 series cameras these are full-frame cameras but you don't need them to shoot
good pictures of the Milky Way if you have a crop censored camera you can get
really good shots you just might need a wider lens the first camera I use to get
a successful shot of the Milky Way was the Canon 350d it wasn't the best shot
in the world but it opened my eyes to Astro photography
a fast wide manual lens is great for astrophotography you don't strictly need
one but it'll make the job a lot quicker and a lot easier I sometimes shoot with
a fly-by-wire lens but most of the time I'll use my manual focus lenses I'll
make sure I know where the infinity point is by checking it on a far point
in the middle of the day and then as long as I mark this point or remember
where it was I can easily put it back to this point and keep checking back when
I'm shooting at night and this is by far the best investment you can make if
you're serious about astrophotography you set your focus and set your aperture
and you're done all you have to do is shine a torch on the top of the lens to
check these every now and then if you're shooting with a crop sense of camera
you'll need something like a ten to twelve millimeter lens with a widest
aperture that you can afford if you're shooting with a full-frame camera a
fourteen to sixteen millimeter lens is really good basically I'm talking about
wide field astrophotography so the wider the better then you'll get more of the
Milky Way in your shot you can do a pano stitch but that's a subject for a
different tutorial an app like photo pills or the photographer's ephemeris
will show you where the Milky Way is in the sky and you can get the time from
the app when it'll be in the position you want it to be you can also plan
around the moon phases with this app if your location scouting as long as you
have a signal you can check to see exactly where it will be in the sky with
the AR function
when planning your nighttime photo shoot you want to find the darkest location
possible nearest to you if you go to light pollution map info this is a great
place to start by using this and Google Maps you can find the darkest locations
near you so that when you're planning your shoot you'll know where to go to
get a good dark sky also depending on where you are on the planet will
determine how dark it gets the closer you are to the Arctic Circle in the
summer time for that hemisphere the lighter the nights will be so these are
two things to take into consideration when searching for a dark sky because
there's so little light about you'll need to keep the shutter open for a
really long time so you'll need to shoot from a tripod you want to get a good
sturdy tripod if you get a cheap plastic key one the camera might move or you
might get some shake in your shots so do a little bit of research and maybe go
down to your local camera shop and see what they have again because you're
shooting long exposures you'll need to keep the camera as still as possible
when using a remote shutter release this will ensure that you won't touch the
camera when pressing the shutter button you don't need one of these and if you
don't have one you can put the camera on a self timer this will just delay the
shutter from opening so you can get your hands away from the camera before it
takes the photograph when shooting under a new moon you'll need a torch for a
couple of reasons the main one is to see what you're doing you'll need to see
where you're setting up and see what you might be able to get into the foreground
the second reason is that you might want to like paint your foreground if you're
not sure how to do this click on the I in the corner this will take you to
another of my videos last of all you'll need clear skies and this is where
patience comes in you may do all of the planning find a really good dark
location and then plan for a new moon but then it's cloudy I'm quite fortunate
that we live in Dubai we have lots of clear skies so I have lots of
opportunities to shoot the stars you may live in a place where the weather is a
little bit less predictable so basically get everything else ready to go so when
it is a clear sky on a new moon you're ready to go and ready to shoot the Milky
Way and that's about it I'm really looking forward to this milky
way's season I've got lots of ideas for tutorials so keep an eye out for them if
that's something you're into I've also got access to a tracker so I'm looking
forward to using this and showing you what I've learnt as always if you like
what you see give me a thumbs up if you didn't give me a thumbs down and for
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