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CapturingTheNight — Camera Versus Eye
Published: 2014-05-03 08:47:45 +0000 UTC; Views: 3902; Favourites: 235; Downloads: 0
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Description
I am often asked if you can really see what I photograph at night with your own eyes. And the answer is sort of Yes and No. The image on the bottom is a good representation of what I can see with my own eyes from where I live which is blessed with really dark skies. I can easily see the Milky Way as a faint band running across the sky and I can make out the dark dust lanes within the Milky Way. Some of the stars are distinctly reddish, yellowish or blueish but for the most part the sky at night to the unaided eye is monochrome. I can even see the zodiacal light on occasion (top right of image streaming to the central bulge of the MW).What the long exposure of a camera does (top image) is bring out the colours of the night sky and makes those faint unaided eye details much brighter and more defined.
A lot of those comments that I get are from people who have never experienced the sheer majesty and wonder of a truly dark sky. They live in cities where they may at best only see the brightest stars and planets at night.
To find out more about the importance of dark skies and how you can make a difference please visit www.darksky.org/ and/or follow the International Dark-Sky Association on Facebook.
10 image vertical panorama taken back in 2012. Canon 60D, 10mm, F/3.5, ISO 3200, 10 x 30 seconds.
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Comments: 45
Nice explanation. Great image. I have one question thou: Is your camera adapted, full spectrum? I watched show Inside milky way, they said you need IR capable camera to get red colors in Milky way.
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Thank you so much 
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Could you please comment on my photo: zenith1.deviantart.com/art/Sta… , how to improve technique to get better image next time, cause yours are perfect.
Thanx.
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You have not included any details on what equipment you used and what your camera settings were in the description so there is nothing for me to base a critique on.
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Really sorry. Just edited and entered description.
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WB and tint are probably a little too blue/purple for my liking but colour is a personal preference. ISO is too high. Yes the 5DMkIII can handle those ISO's fine, but you loose too much dynamic range. Better to go for 3200-6400 and increase contrast in post processing. The distorted stars in all the corners are caused by coma. The Canon 14mm is far from the best lens for astrophotography because of this. The only way to get rid of it is to stop the lens down even further than you have but this of course reduces your exposure so not much you can do about that. Do some internet searching and you will find plenty of tutorials around these days on how to shoot and process night sky shots. They might not all be free. Good luck with it all.
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Thanx. I guess Samyang 14 would be better choice and cheaper.
Thanx again.
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aww, too bad our eyes cannot have long exposures too ha. thanks for the tutorial
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Thank you so much
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Oh my gosh, this is amazing!! I was showing some friends in my astronomy class today some of your pictures, and they said that you used photoshop to make it look like this! But my dad has also taken some very lovely pictures of the night sky and they turned out similar in sheer majesty and clarity. All you need is a camera, a really good camera, and you can really see it like this.
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Thank you so much
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Just keep up your awesome work, I always look forward to it! (Haters gonna hate 
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Thank you so much
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Indeed, but there is something magical about observing the night sky with nothing but your own eyes
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Oh I understand that feeling all too well. I got that feeling when I saw the blood moon not long ago - I watched it from start to finish that night. But I can't hope to imagine the magic you have seen with your eyes. You must live in the most perfect place to stargaze and with your camera and equipment, you must seen even more!
Where I live, the lights do get in the way, but I can see some stars and the faint shimmers of those stars being blocked out by the lights. Ever since seeing your work, I have been wanting to find a place that would give the best view of the cosmos above. Do you have any suggestions?
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I'm not familiar with were you live (as I am in Australia and it says you are in the US) so I do not have any suggestions for good dark sky areas for you, sorry. But basically anywhere you can get as far away from city lights as possible. Probably more chance of this in the western states of the US I believe.
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Yeah probably, theres a lot more open space and farm and cattle land and untamed wilderness.
Thank you for the info
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Thank you so much
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This reminds me of a somewhat funny anecdote I read recently: www.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/as… In the first paragraph they point out that there was a massive power outage in LA in 1990. All lights out. That night 911 received a lot of calls about strange things floating around in the sky. Those strange clouds everyone was calling about was the night sky they were seeing for the first time.
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Haha, I have never heard that before. Pretty funny but also kind of sad that there are so many people the world over who have no idea what is above us without artificial lights spoiling the view
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Greg, a'r you use the DxO or something similar for image editing? 
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No I do not use DxO Serge, but I should probably check it out. What I meant by the 10 x 30 seconds is that it is a panorama made from 10 different images, each of 30 seconds duration.
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ok... thanks for the reply Greg!
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Beautiful! But why you don`t share high res pics? Its too small even for wallpaper.
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Thank you so much
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Lovely pictures! Here in the boonies of the United States we get a lot of gorgeous stars and you can see the faint Milky Way. It's always odd for me when I do business in big cities and I can't see everything at night. I've found that I'd much rather live away from cities and have to commute for work for the night views.
There's something about that view that sings to the soul.
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I hope this year to get a nice photo of the milky way. I have been lucky enough to see it before but I live too close to Melbourne so I'm lucky that I can see a few stars/planets but that's just about it which is really sad
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I hope you get a chance to escape the city lights a bit. Fortunately you don't have to travel too far away from Melbourne to get a pretty good dark sky. Somewhere like Cape Shank with the MW bulge rising in the East could be very good.
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Thanks for the tip. I also have a friend who lives in Eltham. Still a bit of light pollution there but driving further up north should also show a lot more. Thankfully like you said I don't have to travel too far. Hopefully sometime soon will need to find a good clear night
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here , we have no shot at getting a night picture like this. I'm in the northeast lightbelt...I can only see three or four stars even on the clearest night....
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I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope you get a chance to escape those lights and experience a truly dark sky soon.
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Not much chance of that along the US East coast... I've seen truly dark skies.. when we lived in Alaska
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