Vintage Soligor 135mm 2.8 Both shot wide open.

 

I finally got out this season to take a Milky Way shot.




Oops. This edit is better. This is one with a bit of my long sky exposure showing the ocean a bit. It's been a while, I forgot how to process properly.



Unlike in these long exposure photos with my flashlight, lighting everything up evenly, it reality it was pitch black and yes, it was unnerving walking out there with my flashlight taking exposures with pitch black water on both sides of me as the wharf swayed back and forth with the light waves. Of course it had to be hide tide too boot. The movie Jaws was right on the forefront of my mind.

Here's a single exposure for reality, save for the fact I could see the Milky Way by eye up there also, but this is a lower camera setting for the foreground. Aside from the sky, this is how it was while there:



Would you go out there alone, to create this shot?

There are 10 sky photos, used to stack in sequator to remove the long exposure/ high iso noise and then about 15 (I took about 25) foreground exposures like this one, lighting up different sections to create the single multi exposed photo. That's what it takes to get a nice clean sky and a dynamic light painted foreground. It takes about 20 mins to half hour to take the 30 or so photos and about 15 to 20 mins on the pc to blend them together.

Sky settings I use are:
20 seconds for my 24mm 1.4 sigma art (15 secs when using my 35mm 1.4 sigma art), usually wide open but it was so dark here and the stars so bight, I stopped down to f2. iso 6400.
Foreground settings are:
10 seconds, F8, iso 1000 - this is what gives you the clean, low noise foreground. Often I'll refocus, but here I checked at F8 about 10 feet down the wharf and saw I was right on still, at infinity.
tools used:
Sequator for removing sky noise/lightroom to process/photoshop to blend the multi exposures and to remove me and my flashlight out of the exposures (nothing fake added) what you see, my camera (full frame Nikon D610) took the photo (in this cases, multi photos) of. Everything is always manual focus only, and full manual mode camera settings and you must shoot in RAW (I always do anyway. All my photos I process in lightroom, night or day. No camera can give you the quality you can get yourself in LR.)

 

 

Some more vintage lens fun. Imado 135mm F/2.8 Auto Micro MC

 

Later that day as the sun was going down, I threw on a couple modern lenses to grab these low light gems.



Nikon 50mm F/1.8 G AF-S Nikkor - Shot @ f16,40 seconds,iso 100



Sigma 35mm F/1.4 DG HSM ART - Shot @f16,10 seconds,iso 100

 

Then the Milky Way came up.






Then I found a good place to pitch my tent in the woods, 15' from high tide and let the waves send me to sleep. Every Saturday should be so nice.

 

Some more vintage lens fun w/ Sears 135mm 2.8 Auto MC
(Yes, I love these old film era; late 70's/early 80's 135mm's. I have about a dozen in my collection now.)


I spotted Sasquatch at his cabin.


This is how 135mms shine. Close up subjects to fill the frame and wide open. They're not really landscape lenses, though I do like to use them that way too.










Took a pano with my Samyang 85mm 1.4 - In the full version that I can't upload here, you can pixel peep around the whole fishing village (well, fishing/tourist village these days; Stonington). It's pretty cool.

 

I enjoy seeing your photographs...nice work. I got a pic of the Milky Way the other night also...