Milky Way views

[gregbradley]

I used my Sony Nex 6 and Samyang 8mm F2.8 Fisheye and Samyang 24mm F1.4 lenses to take some Milky Way shots.

Here are 3:

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/150003545/large 3 image panorama Nex 6 and 8mm fish

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/150003600/large Milky Way south looking Samyang 8mm Fisheye F2.8

http://upload.pbase.com/gregbradley/image/150003598 green airglow Samyang 24mm F1.4 at F2.2

30 seconds, ISO 6400.

Greg.

[Rod771]

Well done Greg

I especially like the middle one

Great result :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

Thanks Rod.

I am looking forward to the next new moon to do some more.

Greg.

[iceman]

The second one is my favourite too, lovely.

The 3rd one certainly has a strong green bias. It overwhelms the sky! Is the colour balance the same between the three?

[Larryp]

Definitely the second one:thumbsup:

[spacezebra]

No 2 for me. Cheers Petra d.

[Ross G]

Nice photos Greg.

I really like the 3rd one that shows foreground detail.

The Sony NEX seems to be working really well and those lenses have such a wide FOV. Good luck with it.

I nearlly bought an NEX, but instead fell into the "dark side" and bought a second hand Canon 5D mk1...fingers crossed!

Ross.

[gregbradley]

Yes it was on auto white balance. I took some images with the Nikon D800E that night as well. They also showed strong green air glow. I guess some nights its just really strong.

I prefer the 2nd one also. The panorama is too warped and not enough variance in colour. After seeing your wonderful pano with the hills in the foreground I now feel a strong interesting foreground element is important in these panoramas to anchor the shot and make it make more sense and more real.



Thanks Larry. The image is also de-fisheyed using a software plug in.




Thanks Petra. I also have a 2 or 3 time lapses that turned out well later that night.



A full frame camera is hard to beat. 5D started the whole revolution. It has larger pixels so that should be an advantage. The Nex is good but at the end of the day its a noticeably less than a Nikon D800E or a Canon 5D3, 6D or 1DX. A Metabones Speedbooster though would narrow the gap but then you are back to 6D, D600 type prices and full frame.

Greg.

[ourkind]

Nice work Greg, the 2nd image does it for me, the milky way looks beautiful.

[gregbradley]

Thanks Carlos. I have a pretty time lapse of the same view where the air glow shifts around and the clouds shoot past and they add interest.

You can get a time lapse app for $10 from the Sony shop which is one reason I got the Nex 6. Its fiddly and took a while to understand but once you set it up you it keeps the last settings. It works quite nicely too.

The Nex 6 is a good camera for astrophotography and a cheaper alternative to the full frame cameras (body only is about $815 on ebay and there are lots of cheap high qualty legacy lenses that work well on it). But APSc is quite a bit smaller than full frame and I see that in the images. There is a lack of tolerance to processing compared to similar exposures on my Nikon D800E. It won't take much processing.

Ideal strategy would be to do 3 or 5 minute shots on a Polarie to get the signal up and overcome that weakness. Or use a Metabones speed booster to narrow the full frame advantage. But now you are back to close to Canon 6D or Nikon D600 prices.

Greg.