Settings for night sky pictures in the Himalayas.

[ramrod]

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Hello

 

I got my Q for a few days now and im off course still learning and reading .

In 1 week time i will be going to the Himalayas so i don,t have that much time to get to know everything about the camera .

I like to take some night shots pictures from the dark sky with all the stars shining bright at a altitude between 4000m and 6000m , can you please advise me about how to get the best results ?

Thx

[otto.f]

You can see for yourself on the screen whether your pictures are ok, or that you have to try again. Too long exposures won’t work, I can tell you that; stars and the moon move faster than you think or can see with your eyes. The automatic lightmetering and exposure settings will always be too long, resulting in a lot of noise in the sky. So do it manually and at ISO 320, start with 1/125 and f2.8 and vary your f-stop until it’s ok for you. 

Edited August 12, 2019 by otto.f

[Herr Barnack]

@ramrod, first of all, congratulations on your new Q2 and welcome to the forum!

Nikon has some advice on photographing the night sky in a way that stars will be rendered as pinpoints of light rather than as ovals due to the rotation of the Earth:

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-techniques/photographing-the-night-sky.html

There is also the so-called Rule of 500 which I have read about before:

https://lifehacker.com/follow-the-500-rule-to-take-the-best-pictures-of-the-1790638135

Some of the shutter speeds that the Rule of 500 allows seem to me to be way too long if you want your stars to be rendered as pinpoints of light and not ovals or blurs. 

Since you have a week left before you leave, I would urge you to do some experiments at home with your Q2, tripod and the Q2's longest shutter countdown delay before you head off to the Himalayas.

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by Herr Barnack

[marchyman]

See also this site: https://www.lonelyspeck.com/milky-way-exposure-calculator/

Note that the Q can not always do what the calculator suggests due to limitations of shutter speed and ISO.   The calculator would have you shoot, ISO 1600, f/1.8, for 18 seconds.  At ISO 1600 shutter speed is limited to 8 seconds on the Q

 

 

[ramrod]

 

Thx guys , really great help. 

@ Herr Barnack , its not the Q2 , just the Q ...

[4peterse]

For point stars, you should not expose longer than 4 or 6 seconds. ISO 1600 already gives good results. Higher ISO can produce more stars, but color reproduction will suffer and noise will increase. You should use the interval mode to take multiple photos and stack the photos in post processing to reduce noise.

This is an example I took on a Greek island, and I guess under good conditions (no moon), the sky in the mountains will be much better:

 

[mbphotox]

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+1 to stacking! (and beautiful image @4peterse )

I would probably shoot at f/2.8 and iso 800, then do several exposures at the maximum allowed shutter speed (16s, I guess?)

You get less light into the frame at f/2.8, but at iso 800, there will be less noise and by exposing for 16 seconds, you get better saturation of the sensor than at 8seconds and iso 1600.
Very importantly, too, there will be much less vignetting and sharper corners at the slower f-stop, which benefit the outcome.

Also, since the Leica is so small, you could use a small tracking mount. like the star adventurer mini: http://philhart.com/content/star-adventurer-mini-review

That way, you could shoot at f/2.8 or f/4, base iso and 60+ second exposures.

[Leica Guy]

2 hours ago, mbphotox said:

+1 to stacking! (and beautiful image @4peterse )

I would probably shoot at f/2.8 and iso 800, then do several exposures at the maximum allowed shutter speed (16s, I guess?)

You get less light into the frame at f/2.8, but at iso 800, there will be less noise and by exposing for 16 seconds, you get better saturation of the sensor than at 8seconds and iso 1600.
Very importantly, too, there will be much less vignetting and sharper corners at the slower f-stop, which benefit the outcome.

Also, since the Leica is so small, you could use a small tracking mount. like the star adventurer mini: http://philhart.com/content/star-adventurer-mini-review

That way, you could shoot at f/2.8 or f/4, base iso and 60+ second exposures.

I have that tracker and it’s superb as long as you don’t let the camera and lens combo get too heavy. Certainly for the Q it’ll work great. 

[Jared]

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

The Q and Q2 are actually fairly capable at nightscapes.  There are better cameras for this purpose, perhaps,  it they do pretty well.

Here is what I have found works pretty well...

First, you will want to compose your shot.  Set the ISO as high as it will go, open up the lens to f/1.7, and set the exposure to 1s.  The image quality will be terrible, but it will easily show enough for you to compose your shot.  You’ll likely struggle to do it with the EVF otherwise if the skies are dark.  Shoot a frame, judge the composition, move the camera a bit on the tripod, and shoot again.  Once you are happy with the composition, try the following:

1) You will need to be in “manual focus” mode, so you can’t use Fotos for remote release.  Put the camera in manual focus and set the focus on infinity by looking at the scale on the lens.  Use a flashlight if it’s too dark to see.  Also, I STRONGLY recommend you shoot in DNG format for nightscapes, not JPG’s.  The bit depth makes a huge difference for this type of work.  I would also recommend daytime white balance as a starting point.  You can always override this in post, but it’s the single best in-camera starting point in my view.

2) Star fields will show every lens defect, so you’ll want to stop down a little.  I would recommend f/2.8 as a reasonable compromise between lens speed and astigmatism.  You’ll still notice stars are a little bit seagull shaped in extreme corners, but it’s not too bad, and by f/4 you may be giving up more light than you want to.  You can experiment a little, but 2.8 works well with the Q/Q2.  F/2.0 isn’t bad, either, but I think 2.8 is a reasonable compromise.  Depends on how you want to balance sharp stars on the corners vs. lower image noise.

3) ISO doesn’t matter as much as you might think (as long as you plan on stacking multiple images).  The total number of images you stack will affect your end result much more than whether you shoot at ISO 800 or 6400.  I have found 1600 a reasonable compromise under moderately dark skies.  You’ll be able to keep color on the brighter stars, and won’t need to be too aggressive in stretching.

4) I think the max exposure at ISO 1600 is 8s on the Q/Q2 and that’s not a bad place to be.  Much shorter and you’ll end up with more read noise in your stack than you want.  If the skies are really dark I might try ISO 800 and 16s exposures instead, but it will be a similar result in the end. Much longer than 8-16s and the stars will start to drift during a single exposure.  

5) Make sure OIS is turned off and that your tripod is stable.

6) Enable the 2s self timer function since you won’t be Using Fotos for remote release.

7) Take a bunch of pictures.  At least half a dozen.  Preferable a dozen or more.  To a first approximation, your signal to noise ratio improves as the square root of the number of images.  So four images will have twice the SNR of a single image.  Sixteen will have 4x the SNR, etc.

Now breath a sigh of relief.  You’ve got your raw data. The adventure of post processing can begin!  Don’t try to process your data the same night as you collected them.  You’ll make mistakes (from being out late) and just end up doing it all over again.

The techniques for stacking and aligning will depend a bit on the platform, the software, and the particular composition, but the following generalizations work.

1) You’ll need two separate stacks of data.  One where he stars are aligned, and one where the foreground objects are aligned.  You’ll want to lend these two.  Generally, a “median” combine is a better place to start rather than adding frames together or averaging.  Median will not do quite as good a job with noise, but it does a really good job of eliminating airplanes, car headlights, and satellite trails, and that’s usually worthwhile.  Some astronomy specific stacking programs have even more sophisticated techniques like sigma clip combine, but you can’t manage that with just Photoshop and Lightroom.

2) Many software packages will let you “auto align” your layers.  This tends to favor foreground over stars.  If you have a mix of both, you may need to mask out your foreground elements to get the images to auto align on the stars.  If you have any cloud cover at all—even just a few passing puffies—alignment may fail altogether.  For foreground you can generally just stack without alignment (as long as your tripod was nice and stable).  Then you will have to create the star stack aligning manually.  You’ll need a combination of translation, rotation, and distort.  The last is not necessary with telephoto views, but any time you have a rectilinear wide angle image like with the Q/Q2 you’ll need to correct for perspective.  It’s not a camera flaw.  You can find tutorials on how to do this online.  Watch one that is appropriate for your software.

3) Forgot to mention... Before stacking, choose one image to start with and make exposure adjustments to make it as nice as you can, then make sure the rest of the images have the exact same adjustments.  White balance, exposure, shadow recovery, contrast, etc. should be the same for all frames.  If you have some “marginal” frames (maybe a passing car?  Or not quite as sharp as the rest?) you are usually better off including them rather than culling them.  Most people are surprised by that.  Noise is the enemy more than resolution, so leave them in.  Make sure noise reduction—both luminance and color/chrominance—as well as sharpening are all zeroed out in all your exposures.  This will make any given exposure look worse, but you want to do this work on the final stack, not on the individual frames.  Otherwise, for example, you will lose the colors of fainter stars.

If you want more specific advice based on your particular software, let me know.

The attached image is from the Q2.  This one is a stack of about fifteen images taken at f/2, ISO 1600 on a moonless night in Oak Bluffs, MA.  The sky glow behind the tree is primarily from the town of Edgartown, MA.  I liked how the Milky Way followed the arc of the tree and was hoping it would be dark enough and still enough that I could get a reflection of the Milky Way in the little pond, but it just wasn’t.  Jupiter, at least, showed up in the water (as well as the tree), but not the Milky Way.

 

[Leica Guy]

12 hours ago, Jared said:

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

The Q and Q2 are actually fairly capable at nightscapes.  There are better cameras for this purpose, perhaps,  it they do pretty well.

Here is what I have found works pretty well...

First, you will want to compose your shot.  Set the ISO as high as it will go, open up the lens to f/1.7, and set the exposure to 1s.  The image quality will be terrible, but it will easily show enough for you to compose your shot.  You’ll likely struggle to do it with the EVF otherwise if the skies are dark.  Shoot a frame, judge the composition, move the camera a bit on the tripod, and shoot again.  Once you are happy with the composition, try the following:

1) You will need to be in “manual focus” mode, so you can’t use Fotos for remote release.  Put the camera in manual focus and set the focus on infinity by looking at the scale on the lens.  Use a flashlight if it’s too dark to see.  Also, I STRONGLY recommend you shoot in DNG format for nightscapes, not JPG’s.  The bit depth makes a huge difference for this type of work.  I would also recommend daytime white balance as a starting point.  You can always override this in post, but it’s the single best in-camera starting point in my view.

2) Star fields will show every lens defect, so you’ll want to stop down a little.  I would recommend f/2.8 as a reasonable compromise between lens speed and astigmatism.  You’ll still notice stars are a little bit seagull shaped in extreme corners, but it’s not too bad, and by f/4 you may be giving up more light than you want to.  You can experiment a little, but 2.8 works well with the Q/Q2.  F/2.0 isn’t bad, either, but I think 2.8 is a reasonable compromise.  Depends on how you want to balance sharp stars on the corners vs. lower image noise.

3) ISO doesn’t matter as much as you might think (as long as you plan on stacking multiple images).  The total number of images you stack will affect your end result much more than whether you shoot at ISO 800 or 6400.  I have found 1600 a reasonable compromise under moderately dark skies.  You’ll be able to keep color on the brighter stars, and won’t need to be too aggressive in stretching.

4) I think the max exposure at ISO 1600 is 8s on the Q/Q2 and that’s not a bad place to be.  Much shorter and you’ll end up with more read noise in your stack than you want.  If the skies are really dark I might try ISO 800 and 16s exposures instead, but it will be a similar result in the end. Much longer than 8-16s and the stars will start to drift during a single exposure.  

5) Make sure OIS is turned off and that your tripod is stable.

6) Enable the 2s self timer function since you won’t be Using Fotos for remote release.

7) Take a bunch of pictures.  At least half a dozen.  Preferable a dozen or more.  To a first approximation, your signal to noise ratio improves as the square root of the number of images.  So four images will have twice the SNR of a single image.  Sixteen will have 4x the SNR, etc.

Now breath a sigh of relief.  You’ve got your raw data. The adventure of post processing can begin!  Don’t try to process your data the same night as you collected them.  You’ll make mistakes (from being out late) and just end up doing it all over again.

The techniques for stacking and aligning will depend a bit on the platform, the software, and the particular composition, but the following generalizations work.

1) You’ll need two separate stacks of data.  One where he stars are aligned, and one where the foreground objects are aligned.  You’ll want to lend these two.  Generally, a “median” combine is a better place to start rather than adding frames together or averaging.  Median will not do quite as good a job with noise, but it does a really good job of eliminating airplanes, car headlights, and satellite trails, and that’s usually worthwhile.  Some astronomy specific stacking programs have even more sophisticated techniques like sigma clip combine, but you can’t manage that with just Photoshop and Lightroom.

2) Many software packages will let you “auto align” your layers.  This tends to favor foreground over stars.  If you have a mix of both, you may need to mask out your foreground elements to get the images to auto align on the stars.  If you have any cloud cover at all—even just a few passing puffies—alignment may fail altogether.  For foreground you can generally just stack without alignment (as long as your tripod was nice and stable).  Then you will have to create the star stack aligning manually.  You’ll need a combination of translation, rotation, and distort.  The last is not necessary with telephoto views, but any time you have a rectilinear wide angle image like with the Q/Q2 you’ll need to correct for perspective.  It’s not a camera flaw.  You can find tutorials on how to do this online.  Watch one that is appropriate for your software.

3) Forgot to mention... Before stacking, choose one image to start with and make exposure adjustments to make it as nice as you can, then make sure the rest of the images have the exact same adjustments.  White balance, exposure, shadow recovery, contrast, etc. should be the same for all frames.  If you have some “marginal” frames (maybe a passing car?  Or not quite as sharp as the rest?) you are usually better off including them rather than culling them.  Most people are surprised by that.  Noise is the enemy more than resolution, so leave them in.  Make sure noise reduction—both luminance and color/chrominance—as well as sharpening are all zeroed out in all your exposures.  This will make any given exposure look worse, but you want to do this work on the final stack, not on the individual frames.  Otherwise, for example, you will lose the colors of fainter stars.

If you want more specific advice based on your particular software, let me know.

The attached image is from the Q2.  This one is a stack of about fifteen images taken at f/2, ISO 1600 on a moonless night in Oak Bluffs, MA.  The sky glow behind the tree is primarily from the town of Edgartown, MA.  I liked how the Milky Way followed the arc of the tree and was hoping it would be dark enough and still enough that I could get a reflection of the Milky Way in the little pond, but it just wasn’t.  Jupiter, at least, showed up in the water (as well as the tree), but not the Milky Way.

 

Thank you for the detailed explanation on how to do astrophotography with the Q/Q2. Really terrific. I like doing photos with the Q that are out of the ordinary and push the camera into areas not normally associated with this camera. You’ve certainly done that. Great job. 

[Jared]

Thanks, Leica Guy.  I think anyone interested in travel photography and landscape photography should give nightscapes a try.  You’ll learn a lot about your camera’s true capabilities, how it behaves at the limit, what’s really going on with your lenses wide open, image processing, and just how flexible (or not) your raw files really are.  You’ll be forced to acquire a deeper understanding of the relationship between noise and dynamic range, the strengths and limitations of noise reduction, and even effective output sharpening.  Just getting a consistent white balance across the image is a huge problem.  You can also learn a lot about composition and visualizing your final image (since the Milky Way isn’t going to show structure or color to the naked eye).  I think it’s one of the most technically challenging forms of photography—the only thing worse is long focal length astrophotography where you throw in all the complications of careful tracking and guiding.

The Q and Q2 are actually not terrible at this.  Not great, either.  The forced LENR makes it almost impossible to do star trails and actually hurts one’s ability to handle noise through better methods, like master dark subtraction.  As you said, though, it can be fun to push yourself and your camera out of your comfort zone.