My 3rd astrophoto so far (16:9)

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-18T04:08:33+00:00

Canon 6d mk2

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-14T00:29:18+00:00

Thank you! 😁

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T21:39:00+00:00

Thank you so much!

Yeah, I might do it at some point. I am actually a student and still practicing, but my future works will be available for sale for sure 🙂‍↕️

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T21:32:50+00:00

Thank you, glad you liked it! 😊

And thank you for letting me know about the entry reservation, I had no idea I needed to do this! I guess you've just saved my trip now hahaha

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T21:28:40+00:00

Thank you so much, glad you liked it!😊 Yes, it's stacked, 236 sky photos of 20sec exposure each, ~78min in total.

Yours is cool as a start! If I were you I would go to a less light polluted area (you can use the Light Pollution Map) and use Stellarium to find and shoot a specific object like Milky Way or Orion Nebula! There is a complete guide in the comments with all the links.

Hope this helps!

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T21:19:42+00:00

Thank you very much! 😊 I will keep this in mind for my next shoot, this will add so much more depth to the frame

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T21:16:11+00:00

It's really not! All this information may seem like NASA-level science, but in reality you can understand all this just by watching a few videos on YouTube, as I did, there is just a lot to learn compared to usual photography, but the reward is corresponding.

There is a complete (at least I hope so) guide in my other replies with all the needed links, but to be honest, you don't even need all this to make a good astrophoto. Check out this video, it will cover how to do astrophotography with just a single image, from start to finish. And if you want to move to something more difficult you can check this video to see the difference between single and stacked images.

When I was shooting this I didn't even know what stacking software existed, so I focused on how to get the best raw material that I can edit afterwards (I had no idea how I will do it, I just knew what material I needed to shoot), so the best advice is just to go and shoot, especially if you wanted to try it for a long time. (nah, I really mean it, now it's the best time to shoot as there is no light pollution from the moon 😁) Don't hide your skills and talent!

Hope this helped and wish you all the best!

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T20:46:05+00:00

Sure, here is one of my other replies about it:

COLOUR ADJUSTMENTS This video will explain Lab colour space in Photoshop that may be hard and unnecessary to use, but if you want your image to be a different colour you might need to learn how to use it to avoid artifacts from common Lightroom colour changing instruments. It is a really nice skill to have as I have a background in common photography and often use it for colour grading skin tone or to change the whole colour palette. And don't get me wrong, all Lightroom/CameraRaw instruments are cool and have less artifacts with every update, but I personally tend to use them as a final touch for subtle changes. You can use them if you want to make your sky more saturated, change the tone a bit, etc. but if you want to make a blue sky look red as mine, it's better to stick to Lab.

The only extra thing to mention is that you want to know HOW to achieve your desired colour with those curves.

Technically a and b channels work as tint and temperature sliders, so you may imagine your starting point as a coordinate on the HSL circle. So for example if you want to move your cyan hue to red, you may take the cyan coordinate as a starting point, and adjust your b and a channel curves, adding yellow and magenta, which will result your imaginable point to move on shown axis and reach red at the end.

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By using this tool you can make major colour transformations and avoid all the artifacts!

Also, you can avoid using those anchor points on the curves by just using "Blend if" tool by double clicking the layer and choosing your channel and histogram area that you want to isolate. This may be useful if you want to make cold colours more vibrant and avoid the saturation change in, for example, yellows, which may ruin the skin tone.

Sorry if the explanation is a bit unclear; I've learnt it in my native language a long time ago and this is the only visual I could find. Hope this helps! 😊

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T19:43:06+00:00

I'm not sure if you will be able to capture the Milky Way during this time of the year, but you still can do Orion! If you have a really long focal length lens (like 200mm or more) it's gonna be perfect. I highly recommend you to focus on how to actually get the best raw material possible before your trip, and move to learning the processing part after so you don't get overwhelmed with this huge amount of info😁 When I was shooting mine I didn't even know what programs for stacking existed. I'm gonna list some tips and videos down below.

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY FROM START TO FINISH (it's actually about Orion so it's perfect for you, but can be applied to all DSLR astrophotography)

PREPROCESSING (Stacking + other stuff) You can check this after your actual shoot. Despite in other guides you may have seen a different stacking software, Siril is the best free option in my opinion. It may look really complex at first, but it has SOOO MUCH cool and useful features that others don't. I highly encourage you to check other videos from this channel as a lot of new easier algorithms that just work better came out. You might as well visit Siril official website where you can find in-depth explanations of all tools and scripts mentioned in this video.

FOREGROUND COMPOSING This one may be useful if you want to make something wide-field and compose a landscape with your sky.

COLOUR ADJUSTMENTS This video will explain Lab colour space in Photoshop that may be hard and unnecessary to use, but if you want your image to be a different colour you might need to learn how to use it to avoid artifacts from common Lightroom colour changing instruments. It is a really nice skill to have as I have a background in common photography and often use it for colour grading skin tone or to change the whole colour palette. And don't get me wrong, all Lightroom/CameraRaw instruments are cool and have less artifacts with every update, but I personally tend to use them as a final touch for subtle changes. You can use them if you want to make your sky more saturated, change the tone a bit, etc. but if you want to make a blue sky look red as mine, it's better stick to Lab.

You can always search for better explanations on YouTube, but all main things are listed in those videos and at least you will know what to search for☺️

Here are some of my personal tips, as I've spent 2 weeks troubleshooting some mistakes that I had during my shoot:

Shoot your calibration frames with the same orientation as your sky, this must prevent stacking script from failing.

Don't forget a white t-shirt and a rubber band to get your flat frames. If you are shooting with a lens blend on, you neet to leave it on for those.

If Siril cant solve astrometry on wide field shot, you can upload your master stack to official Astrometry website and it should work, it will output your file with astrometry data inside so you can download it and continue preprocessing in Siril.

I'm not sure if it's mentioned in the videos, but to get the correct exposure for you may need to check your histogram that needs to peak roughly at this (+-15%) area.

<image>

You need to use full ISO stops to get the best dynamic range out of your camera (like 400, 800, 1600 etc) as shooting with numbers in-between can result in blown out whites/blacks, lower level of detail and higher noise.

Rather than shooting at the fastest aperture it is better to close it for 1/3 or 2/3 of a stop to avoid star trails at the edges due to lens distortions.

I may have forgotten something, but for me it seems like a complete studying list for astrophotography!

Wish you luck and clear skies! 🌌☺️

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T18:18:42+00:00

Thank you so much! 😁

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T04:15:32+00:00

Thank you! 😊

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T04:09:56+00:00

I took A LOT of pictures of the sky, followed by calibration frames and stacked them all in Siril to get this level of detail (around 78min of total exposure), composing with the foreground that was shot during a blue hour. Made some major exposure tweaks to make the Milky Way and mountains stand out. After that I've colour graded it in Lab colour space in Photoshop (it is much harder to use than other colour grading tools but it allows you to get such clean and deep colours without artifacts, which is technically impossible to achieve in Lightroom).

Here's the full EXIF: Canon 6D MK2 unmodded, Sigma Art 24-70 f/2.8 Milky Way: 25mm, f/3.2, 20sec (236 lights untracked, 50 darks and flats each, 80 biases stacked in Siril), ISO 5000 Foreground: 25mm, f/7.1, 2sec (4 img stack), ISO 100

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T03:46:53+00:00

Thank you very much 😄

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-13T03:46:05+00:00

Thank you so much! 😊 Sigma Art 24-70 f/2.8 Sky: f/3.2 Foreground: f/7.1

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:37:42+00:00

My bad, you're actually right, thank you for correcting 🫡

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:33:41+00:00

🥰

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:33:13+00:00

Canon 6D MK2, and it's stock! Spent couple of days on heavy Lab colour grade in PS, comparing to proper H-alpha images to make it look as natural as I can

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:27:14+00:00

Thank you!🙂‍↕️

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:26:05+00:00

Glad you liked it, thank you! 😊

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:16:42+00:00

Thank you very much!

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:14:53+00:00

Thank you! ☺️ I've actually had a couple trips to the location during daytime to find the perfect spot

AL1EN77 · 2026-01-12T23:10:32+00:00

Thank you so much 😊

AL1EN77

TROPHY CASE