Our Amazing Galaxy

Nov 16 2009

In September I spent a week in the Lake District.

I took hundreds of photos, but what with there being more pressing (profitable) images to process I still haven’t managed to sort them all out… But here’s one of my favourites, which is also kinda different to the norm-

The Milky Way

Canon 50D + EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens @ 10mm, f/3.5, 64s, ISO1600

It’s the Milky Way. Yes, the sky really was that dark – it was amazing. So I thought I’d try to capture it, which I managed to do on around about the tenth try in the middle of the night freezing my ass off in a field waiting for the exposure to tick over.

The problem I found was that the stars move (yeah yeah it’s Earth that’s moving, whatever) much faster than one would think, so what I assumed would be a standard long exposure turned into a real workout for both my brain and the 50D…

Framing the all-important purple streak of stars required my 10-22mm lens cranked all the way out to 10mm, thus making the widest aperture available f/3.5. Having initially tried a low-ISO exposure of around ten minutes, it became obvious that the movement of the stars was ruining everything. After several attempts (fingers frostbitten by this point) I found that I could only expose the sky for around a minute before the star trails became too noticeable. The ISO for this to work? 1600. And one minute at ISO1600 makes baby Jesus cry. Luckily the 50D just about managed it, and with some liberal noise removal and a small levels tweak to boost the purple we have the final image. Purdy, huh?

What I love about this photo is that, despite how amazing it was to be there, the camera brings out so much more detail than I could see with my eyes on the night.

When I make my fortune I shall return with a 24mm f/1.4 on a full frame camera and try again