Hi everyone, I’m doing lots of milky way shooting these days.I’ve found that when I use the tone mapping module it seems to distort too much. I’ve mostly landed on a process flow like this:
set white balance
exposure, use a parametric mask to edit just the sky, then crank it up so the stars pop
lens correction for my Sigma Art 14mm 1.8 Lens on my Nikon D850
contrast, brightness, saturation: add about 10% contrast, a tiny bit of saturaton and in most cases use brghtness to darken the image slightly
Thoughts? Suggestions? Other approaches I should consider?
I’ve attached a RAW image and a JPG from after the process flow above
I’m no astro-photographer, but your results look very nice to me.
On 100% zoom I notice slight star trails, but that’s only for pedantic pixel-peepers.
The composition is compelling and the clouds add some interest.
What I particularly like is that you used only darktable (and not specialist astro-software and image-stacking), and yet got such a magnificent result.
I also have gear envy reading the spec of your glass
Here’s my attempt. I also thought it was underexposed. I tried to bring out details in the foreground. There’s a little bit of red airglow below the Milky Way that given extra exposure jumps out. I applied the Orton Effect on the Milky Way using the soften module to brighten and make it more cloud-like. DSC_3956.NEF.xmp (18.9 KB)
