so as a photographer i have this long
running list of photos that i want to
someday take and one of them looks a lot
like this there's a large sprawling
valley and snow-covered mountain tops
but of course the main focus of this
photo
is the beautiful milky way cutting
straight through the center of the sky
so i hit up the person who took all of
those photos to teach me how they do it
welcome back to full frame buds becca's
first astrophoto on not just dslr or
mirrorless either
all right becca so really regardless of
what you're shooting with you have to
know where to go and when to go to get
the perfect shot of the stars
my name is betty maya foote i am the
director of engagement for the
international dark sky association and
an astrophotographer
basically you want to avoid light
pollution that can be caused by a number
of things
skyglow is light scattered in the
atmosphere from a nearby city or town
obscuring the view of the night sky
glare is light that's entering your
field of view at shallow angles that
causes visual discomfort
light trespass is light from another
property trespassing onto your property
or into your home at the international
dark sky association we work to protect
the night from artificial light so a
great place to go to start to look for a
dark place is our international dark sky
places program but there are a lot of
other places around the world that are
still great to shoot one of my favorite
maps to look at online is light
pollution map dot info so when you found
your place to shoot you're going to want
to take a look at the moon cycle and
figure out where the moon is in its
phase before you go out to shoot if
you're looking for that really really
dark sky you're going to want to go
before the moon rises or after the moon
sets or during a new moon period
it's also really great to use crescent
moons to light up your foreground as
well while not blocking out too much of
the night sky and brighter moons are
really good at brightening up your
foreground completely and it almost
looks like daytime with stars
you're also going to want to check the
weather you want a good clear night with
no clouds in order to see the most
amount of stars betty maya and i decided
that we'd meet in ridgeway colorado
which is right near top of the pines
recreation area it happens to be the
most recently designated dark sky park
in the u.s
so i called in some filming friends and
away we went
ladies and gentlemen
where the local time is 1 34 pm
and there was one more expert i enlisted
to help us take the perfect photo of the
night sky
and give us another clap
good morning my name is val schwerk and
welcome to the san juan mountains
outside of ridgeway colorado
[Music]
i'm a retired meteorologist i used to
work for noaa in boulder and i'm the
local um dark sky point of contact for
ridgeway colorado and top of the pines
i'm a little concerned about how cold
we're gonna be both val and betty maya
stress the importance of scouting your
location during the day and making sure
you will have nighttime access so our
local guide val led us up to top of the
pines to get a lay of the land
this is our big break phil
this is such a nice open horizon so i'm
looking for
just something intriguing like that will
draw your eye to the foreground and
you're also noticing kind of any
leading lines or any like color blocks
or different parts of the landscape that
are going to draw your eye to a
particular part of the photo
after a whole bunch of scouting and
truthfully getting most things wrong and
the milky way comes out of the west this
time of year now it comes out of the
east
it's going to be probably like right
over over here like this the brightest
part of the milky way is going to be
below the horizon actually we agreed
upon a spot that our last checks of
where the milky way and major
constellations would be before heading
home to prepare our gear
betty maya brought along the canon 5d
mark iv with a sigma 14 millimeter f 1.8
and also a canon 6d with rokinon 24
millimeter f 1.4 and you might notice
that the lenses she brought are both
wide and they stop down to at least an f
1.8 if you shoot with a wider lens you
can expose for a longer amount of time
before you notice the trailing in the
stars
i decided to bring along the canon 5d
mark iv with a canon 24 millimeter f 1.4
and then of course the pixel 6 pro and
the iphone 13 pro and we took our last
few moments of warmth to dial in camera
settings as well changing our focus to
manual focus here
on our lens
white balance it's good to start in
daylight we're going to change our
shutter speed let's we're doing
moonlight shots we'll start at about 10
seconds
let's go down to aperture 2.2
we'll take our iso let's start with 3200
since we're doing 10 seconds then we are
going to
make sure that our lcd brightness is all
the way down
oh good call
so and we're also going to make sure we
have image quality
raw and why is it important to keep your
eyes acclimated to the darkness
so you can see the mountain lion that's
coming to get you
don't tell me that oh no
in the pelican or the backpacking
the last thing we had to do before
hitting the shutter button on our
cameras was focusing
the first step is to set your lens to
manual focus then focus to infinity next
bring up the live view and punch in at
least 10x magnification in the middle of
your screen and find a star
bring that star in and out of focus
until it is the smallest dot of light
that you can make it
then finally take a photo
and don't forget to zoom in and review
your focus before you take any more
i spent most of my childhood summers
sleeping on the trampoline as a kid you
know looking up at the night sky
to me always helped me
wonder about the universe as well as
just like understand that
we're both so small but also so
big and such a part of
this infinite universe
[Music]
we spent close to four hours out
shooting that night and it was
incredible to be under something so
grandiose in a space so vast and quiet
and cold and although i wish the photos
that we took came out of our cameras
looking as good and contrasty and punchy
as the photos you just saw well
unfortunately there's one more part to
getting the perfect astrophoto
i like to think of editing photos as i
try to create a scene that makes me feel
like i felt when i was there
experiencing that moment betty maya uses
a combination of lightroom photoshop and
a program called starry landscape
stacker to reduce noise and bring out
what's called airglow in the image
airglow are particles releasing energy
as light
as photons and here we can see it
you can kind of see these
lines
we ended up shooting with six different
camera systems while we were out there
from canon to fuji sony to apple and
google and i was most impressed by the
work the pixel 6 pro was doing the level
of detail it was able to capture and
instantly process especially when
compared to the iphone 13 pro had me
saying holy again and again
for printing enlarging extended time
lapses or bringing out more of that air
glow the dslrs and mirrorless are
obviously going to provide far more
detail and control but no matter the
camera system getting the perfect astro
shot ultimately comes down to one step
you have to know where to go and when to
go to get the perfect shot of the stars
man i always get sad at the end of the
project you know it's like what do i do
now
drop a comment down below what photo are
we knocking off the list next and a big
thank you to betty mayan val i could not
have done this without you
all right buds i'll see you on the next
one