Appreciate the amount of work you put into this.Despite composing, set up, shooting and filming you still got a cup of tea! Your interaction with the camera is great.Oh yes and inspirational images at the end.Many thanks.
Great video, Richard. I’m blown away by the quality of your single shots in that dark location! Amazing. Your videos have such outstanding production quality - lighting, sound, b-roll all superbly executed. It’s a wonder you have time to take even a single sky shot! Thanks as ever.
Haha, yes I often wonder that myself. I hardly had any time to rest during the night . . although it's hard to tell that from the final video . .but you know all about that Paul. Yes very nice dark skies over here. Thanks again for watching.
Well Richard this is yet another great learning video from you so, thank you. While I like all three shots, stacked, pano, and single shot, I have to say that it is the stacked image that does it for me... Sharp, crisp, little or no noise, what more could a photographer ask for....
Yes I think it's easy to sometimes get all caught up in the tech gear and forget about the simple delights of shooting the night sky and landscape. Todays cameras and lenses are wonderful.
Wow, the tracked and stacked really surprised me. It was amazing that the stacked , stacked up so well against the tracked. Even the single was good but the difference between it and the others was more noticeable. Nice work. :)
I have done plenty of those in the past .. it does increase the detail but unless I'm really wanting ultimate quality I rarely do it these days. Maybe when shooting Orion I'd be more tempted to do that as it's a harder part of the sky to get the faint details to show. @@marktimonen5359
Absolute masterclass of a video Richard, really enjoyed this. Makes me feel a lot better about my novice skills and basic equipment when you show what can be achieved without all the bells and whistles. Looking forward to the editing video you mentioned immensely. As an aside, I hope your quiet part of the world doesn't get overrun with tourists now as it's been named "top town" in Australia.
Yes stacked with Sequator. I pretty much edit all my images the same these days. The stacking is done in Sequator but all else is in Lightroom and Photoshop. The photoshop plug in called StarXterminator is a must have. I also use Topaz De-noise Ai.
Very nice video and beautiful pictures.. my favourite is the tracked shot and the difference in the dynamic range is clearly visible to me...looking forward for more... Cheers
Great Video, once again! If I had to choose, I would say the stacked is my favorite, it seems to bring out more of the building and the tracked ones, seem to make the building lean. I agree the single shots are always the best if you if it can be done!
Another great explanation and showing of the 3 different types. Personally I love the tracked only due to the extended detail in the captured image, though as you say most wouldn’t be able to tell when posted on socials. I think personally taken the little extra time rewards the final image. Great video as always. :)
Richard, you're definitely correct; composition ,access the photo! Also, loved your tracked image with clouds in the sky. Basically, single, tracked or stacked comes down to time commitments and weather conditions.
Another great video with lots of details and knowledge shared. Thank you. As I don’t have a tracker I was particularly interested in the shots achieved without the tracker.
Another fantastically explained video. It makes me edge towards tracked photos but confidence holds me back (Buying a tracker and failing) . At least where I live I dont have as many bugs. Thanks again.
Hard choices for sure but I would go with tracked but very interesting to note that if time etc. are constrained single and stacked are very comparable. Thanks for doing this.
Great video. Very hard to beat HDR images, especially seeing the single versus the stacked images. The HDR just had more depth, a bit more contrast and punch. You get what you work for...😊
Thanks Richard for a great informative video making these comparisons. I have often wondered about the pros and cons of using a star tracker, and the difference in the end result. I also look forward to seeing your editing video, in particular I hope you will cover your star reduction method. I use a method you taught previously, but my results are pretty hit and miss.
Richard I know these techniques are some what of a repeat of your older videos!!! But I really appreciate your taking the time to go over it again!!! I think the majority will do the single shot version! I fall into the group that want to do the stacking! Very very few of us will do the tracking version! I am very very interested in how you do the stacked panorama (start to finish)!!! Please do the editing video that will be great!!! I appreciate your hard work and amazing talent!!! Thank you so much!!!👍👍👍🇺🇲
Richard, this is a fantastic comparison of ways to shoot the night sky. I’ve been shooting single image shots and single image panoramas. Last year I tried using a Move Shoot Move tracker and realized that the weight limit was an issue. I’m now considering a larger tracker to allow tracked panoramas with the Canon R5 and Sigma 40mm Art lens. I thoroughly enjoy the challenges of this form of photography and I’m constantly inspired with your images and clearly presented videos. Looking forward to seeing your video on editing. Enjoy your Summer.
Thanks again Richard for sharing your images and the steps to get these inspiring shots! I have shot all three methods and I agree they each have their place. I feel as you do that it is worth getting out and just relaxing under the stars. Keep up the great work and inspires to get better!
great video Richard, i always do single shot milky way photos because it's looked more nature to me, stacked photos looked more fake., that is my idea. Well done for explaining the difference. Keep up the good work
Always very informative and helpful, presented in a clear and concise way. Your results are some of the best ever, as is your teaching style. I wish I lived closer, I'd be signing up for a class without a doubt. A Canon RF shooter with limited decent options at the moment. I do have the Laowa 15mm f/2 in RF mount, and find it to be as you said - OK, but a bit lacking for sharpness and distortions introduced. Anyway, thanks again for your great work, really enjoyed this one.
Brilliant - really enjoyed this. I need to jump down the modified camera way but I do not have a second camera at the moment and i do a lot of non astro stuff as well which is holding me back from jumping that way at the moment.
Thanks for sharing, Richard. I learned how to use the stacked method on this channel and this year I'll be giving the tracked method a try. The tracked, as you said, has more dynamic range. It will be more work in post but well worth it. It's about minus 13 celsius this morning so it needs to be a little warmer for me here in the middle of the US. No bugs here😊
Excellent video and information as usual. Not had a great deal of opportunity to get much night photography myself, but something that I would like to do more of whenever the opportunity arises and your videos have given me plenty of ideas and inspiration.
GREAT video! The single shot did turn out surprisingly well in comparison. Wonderful! I'm also surprised at how much I like the sunrise single shot image at 18:00, with the pink, orange and yellow! The Milky Way still is very visible, and there is color!! This would be a great print to hang on a wall, as it has uplifting color plus the awesome Milky Way! Perhaps this is something you could do more often when opportunity arises, and you still have energy to shoot that late into the morning. I'm pleasantly surprised the Milky Way is still this visible with this much sunrise light seen. Shocking! Being able to combine night star photography with beautiful sunrise colors! Love it!
@@nightscapeimages.richard Perhaps sunsets could also work? Or maybe the sun is at the wrong angle, and would make the sky too bright to shoot the Milky Way at the same time? I don't recall ever seeing a photographer shoot in one shot the milky way and a sunrise, and it looks so fantastic too!
It's impossible to capture a true sunrise/sunset and the milky way together as the bright sky would totally obliterate the faint stars.@@jefffenske1958
@@nightscapeimages.richard I had always thought it was impossible too, because the light from the sun obliterating the faint stars, so was so surprised you did it here with the single shot at 18:00. I may be understanding what you're now saying. You said a "true" sunrise/sunset. By that, do you mean shooting whent the sun would be closer to the official sunrise/sunset time? I would still call this a sunrise, because the colors are coming from the rising sun; though, it's still below the horizon, maybe significantly. Perhaps you could explain what happened here in the coming processing video of this shoot? I'm thinking that maybe to the human eye at the time you shot this the sky didn't look pink, but the colors were there, which the camera picked up. You probably know all about our eyes not seeing color well in dim light, using the rods instead of the cones, so that may be a reason you may have not seen the pink light and the other colors, if that's what happened? I hadn't thought that your hydrogen alpha modified sensor could play a role in the pinks being so strong from the sun. Could that be a significant factor? I'm thinking maybe not, but is that possible? Could only your camera get these strong pinks? I would say this is a completely legitimate sunrise image; though, the human eye couldn't have seen it that way. The human eye can't see the Milky Way the way your camera can too. And with northern lights/aurora, the human eye has a hard time seeing colors other than green, and the aurora is always much brighter in the images than the way it looks in real life, except perhaps if the aurora is super strong. I love what you did here!
@@nightscapeimages.richard (cont.) If I'm on the right track in thinking that you're thinking this isn't a "true" sunrise because the eye couldn't see it yet - this reminds me of US photographer William Neill's photo: Dawn, Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Canada, which he shot decades ago on film. It was probably too dark for him to see the color that appeared in his long exposure photo. He said he was disappointed that it was overcast, but took the photo anyway. And when he got the film developed he was AMAZED!!! It's a photo that I've always loved, and has influenced me. The blue color is AMAZING!!! His camera captured the color that was there, but the human eye couldn't see it. It's one of his most beloved and famous photos!
Nice video. I just add that the results depend a lot of the sky quality one has. With light pollution increasing the time with a tracker would not be possible as LP stats to clip while stacking brightness control is possible. On the other hand if one wants to shot with high resolution and larger focal distances tracking is the way since shutter speed is too limited.
Stunning images as they always are! I watch you out there fighting off the bugs as I look out at the snow. Then comes the famous trademark cupper and biscuit. Thank you or making and sharing these videos with us my friend! I always look forward to seeing them. Have a great weekend, and if you need some snow I can box some up and mail it to you, 😉 📷☕️🍪
To be honest I thought they were all amazing and the single stacked image was, as you say pretty close to the tracked image and that convinces me not to go down the tracker route just yet. I look forward to the editing video as I've plenty of room for improvement there.
Great vid as always. I stack at the moment. Can’t wait to try my z8 with the new pixel shift mode for stacking 8 raw files or maybe even 32 raw files. Then aligning the sky in Starry Landscape Stacker. Waiting for the right conditions here in Guernsey.
Try smoking cigars to keep the bugs away. Works well for me. I actually liked the morning twilight images the best, but mostly because I prefer the cooler sky color. I gravitate toward a cooler color scheme in my editing anyway.. I also enjoyed the clouds. That adds interest to the image when edited well.
Thanks so much Derek. I'm not too sure I'd prefer the cigars to the bugs ..!!! Yes the twilight shots are something different for me . .I'm hardly ever awake at that time of day.
Thanks for the great video. I vote for stack. Reason being easier to setup and the result is almost comparable to the tracker at least to my untrained eye.
Hi Richard, great work as usual. I think single images are good for newbies and if you're lucky enough to have really dark skies. Where I live, stacking or tracking brings out the detail that you would get out of a single shot in darker skies. So in light polluted skies you don't get as much detail in single shots. Was that pink light aurora or dawn, there's no way we'd get away with that here, as soon as it's twilight stars are gone before any pink light shows
Thanks Suzie. Yes you are correct about the light pollution killing single shots. There wasn't any aurora showing, it was all sunlight. During summer here we have a very long twilight period.
Another great video and as you said, all the images are beautiful (especially love the predawn shots). I think I’d still prefer the tracked images in general as I love the detail in the dust lanes and red nebulas you get, but that may be because I am sucker for pain and suffering 😂. I think most importantly the situation and subject dictate what will work best and the most important thing is to actually get a shot. Oh and a nice cuppa and biscuit is seriously important as well!
@@nightscapeimages.richard You bet, Richard! Question: do you have a preference between mechanical shutter or electronic shutter for your Milky Way photos?
Very reassuring to see that quality results can be obtained whatever the method! Thank you for your time and effort Richard. May get my 'old' camera astro modded, cheers, Paul. P.S. endless cloud up here in my part of the UK.
Richard anyone would be very hard pushed unless you pixel peep to tell them apart from normal viewing distance all are great to have on any wall .I still think that staking is a very good result without luging around more equipment to get the same results. My lens is only f3.5 but I get great results with it
Richard you deserve a knighthood, this is a fantastic and well thought out educational video. Every image is award winning, however since you asked my favorites would be the tracked pano due to the colour in the sky and wispee clouds as it gives the shot atmosphere (to me)and also the single shot near dawn, again for the colour in the sky, as these bring a totally different aspect to the photos. Once again you have shown us to think outside the square and proved there are many ways to achieve a great result. Can't wait for the next installment. You are like Crocodile Dundee, the man from snowy river and Sir Don Bradman, mate, a bloody legend.
Im as green as the colour in your profile picture but soaking up as much information as i can. Your videos are beautifully presented with stunning footage. Thank you for all this incredible information and training. Im subscribed 😊
Tremendously helpful! 👏🏻 Full confession, I have a star tracker I bought 2 years ago - and never used. Looking at how close your stacked and tracked images are, I’m thinking stacking might be the best approach for me. Curious what these images would look like with a non-modified body, and what’s needed in post-processing to achieve a similar look (if possible). Thanks for the info & motivation! ✨ * Also a tutorial for stacking would be super! (I’ll look through your older vids as well)
Thanks for watching Craig. Yes I hear that story a lot about un-used trackers. I think I'll have to make a video comparing the standard camera and modded version. I have lots of videos on the stacking process. See here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3uXHTmwcaFM.html I have changed a few things in more recent times regarding editing but not so much the stacking part. I still use Sequator to do that.
Richard, thanks a lot for sharing your passion and knowledge. As you asked for feedback, I can speculate that RU-vid make it's own processing of images, so will be great to have possibility to download final images and to check them locally on own laptop.
I am a deep space photographer, I have a very large telescope (1200mm focal length) which is able to gather light from quasars more than 9 billion light years away (small dots but I have them in my images). Track and stack is the only way to go, since untracked images at my ridiculous zoom is impossible, even a 1/10 shutter image results in trailed stars if not for ultra precise tracking with an equatorial mount. I do 10min single exposures for many many nights until I get more than 10 hours worth of exposure stack into my final image, sometimes over 20 hours. Every time you double the amount of frames you stack, you reduce noise by sqrt(2). Obviously this means it gets harder and harder to reduce noise the longer you image, but in my case, it's imperative to double the exposure count in hours at least 4 times ( 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 8 and 8 to 16, everything else is extra). When you image small galaxies in pitch black, noise is astronomical (pun intended) compared to a wide field Milky Way image with a mirrorless lens, which is why I need to shoot for so many hours. This is the reasons why I also recommend track and stack even for wide field astrophotography. Always try to double your exposure count and frame your Milky Way images with static objects (preferably no trees) so you can stack more images and boost up your exposure time as much as you can. Trackers are black magic. :D
Almost Milky Way season in the PNW and hoping for some clear skies. Bought a tracker last year and only got to use it 3 times due to cloudy weather. Even in Death Valley. Downside to a tracker is now I spend mush more time taking night sky photos as I change focal lengths. It used to be my blue hour shot, go to bed, wake up when the Milky Way is out, take 40 images, and back to bed so I can stack them. Now I spend way to much time changing focal lengths but it's still a lot of fun.
Awesome video, Richard. It’s been exciting watching the last couple of videos as we near Core season here in Michigan, USA. I hope think in most cases, I lean towards the stacking technique because it’s so much easier than breaking out the tracker when cruising around different locations. I will say the tracker becomes much more useful (in my opinion) once you start going up in focal length. Thanks for the amazing content! 🌌
Thanks for watching Jay. Yes you are so right regarding the longer focal length lenses . ..something I didn't mention in this video but I will in the future.
Awesome work and all the photos are so good.. In my view, Single Shots and Stacked Shots are good to start and the shoot is so peaceful .. once you add tracking, it opens door to better quality images and each shoot takes longer..All great stuff and good to mix all them..great knowledge sharing video.. I am hearing that you are thinking of WA soon.. if you do come then would love to catchup and you can try dunking Ginger Nut biscuits into Masala Chai
Thanks for watching Virat. Yes and add in to the mix filming a video to go along with all of that .. very time consuming as you know. WA is a possibility during the winter .. .not too sure about the Masala Chai ..!!!!
@@nightscapeimages.richard if you do visit in the Winter then let me know and more than happy to take you to few places and you can then try some Chai! Greg is a fan already 😀.. Looking forward to meeting if you do arrive
Hey Richard, TBH I prefer the first photo. I myself do a lot of singles on Milky Way and it allows me to get a lot more compositions in one night. Doing stacked and tracks kind of takes out the adventure for me and I cant see much difference between single, tracked or stacked. At least not enough difference to spend all that extra time on it. Just my opinion. Great video and Fair Dinkum mate!
Because the video is low resolution. It needs to be 4K at least, and even then it can be hard to see much. Better to provide full size downloadable files for review.
Fabulous video Richard, as the season is now on us I'm hoping to get one or two astro images under my belt this year, but having the GFX100 I find it a little limited. Hey ho I'll give it a go (single and stacked for the time being) but I suspect a tracker my yield the best results for me as there aren't any real fast glass available for my system. Thanks again for this, wonderful images as ever... have a great week 🙏🙏🙏
I do like all those shots. I've only stacked whatever I've shot thus far. I got a tracker for deep sky objects and I'm looking to also try it out with nightscapes. Problem is, the skies have been very bad for over a month now. Can't really use the tracker during summer either since it will already be dawn at 3am over here.
All images are great but the stacked and tracked images are the best. Your videos are always inspirational! I just received my Nikon Z7ii - astro and am looking forward to a trip in a few weeks to Death Valley, California and can't wait to image the MW. What WB do you use? I used Incandescent with my unmodified cameras.
Hey Richard thanks so much for this comparison I love Milky Way shots but it’s only an occasional thing for me so the tracker is definitely a non starter the stacked look great but not sure that’s for me just yet I love the single image to my eyes viewed on the phone it looks plenty good enough for my needs so I’ll stay with singles…..for now haha. Awesome vid mate hope ya chord dried out 😂
Great video, thanks. I'm still not sure how the tracker is superior to stacking ten frames. The stacking process reduces noise substantially, and Photoshop is now perfectly adequate with alignment and averaging layers. It's also a lot less faff. I suppose if I was looking at your images on your PC, rather than on RU-vid I would see the difference, but it wouldn't be night and day (haha).
Thanks for watching Geoffrey. In this video they are very close. I'm sure if I added stacking to tracking it would improve substantially. The other thing to consider is that when you increase the focal length beyond about 24mm then you have to lower the shutter speed a lot otherwise you get star trailing . .therefore not getting anywhere near enough signal .. and significantly lowering efficiency. This doesn't happen with a tracker.
Great shots, Richard. Did you happen to see the meteor that went through your video? When you're Discussing Your single shots and your Camera settings..
I never thought the single shot would come out that good, but after doing the hard yards out there at 3am, it would be wrong not to try all the tricks :)
Thanks so much for watching. I was very happy with the end results .. but it's all in the editing. Tune in this weekend for a video going through the single image edit.
Quite a brilliant comparison! I definately notice the differences between all 3 techniques, although not as much as I would've expected. As you progress to the more 'advanced' techniques the milkyway seems to become broader and more detailed. Still worth using the tracker in my opinion but maybe not in every case... interesting! Do you do tracking + stacking also or mainly single tracked shots?
Thanks Jeroen. I usually only do single tracked shots except for Orion where it often needs more capture time. There is no doubt the tracked shots will be best quality, but obviously more time consuming in capture and post.
Thanks for the video Richard. It's nice to watch videos with a presenter in the southern hemisphere. Being new to astrophotography, do you go through the process of collecting dark, flat, and bias frames for M'Way photography?
That's a very good question Rodrigo, considering I bought the Benro Polaris to do automated tracked panoramas . .to be honest I don't quite trust it yet. On this night I was struggling for time . .I don't need issues with the tracker.
Hi Richard, just came across this video & am blown away with the beautiful images shared. I recently went on a Milky Way shoot with friends & really enjoyed the adventure. I am out on another shoot again later this month August 2024 in a lot darker location for 2 nights & hope to have clear skys in Ireland 🙏. Thanks for some great tips 👍
Top Drawer As i use Affinity2 to edit /process my pics . I tried a 3 image stack purely for a self learning perspective . It didn't allow me to edit process the stacked image ..It auto turned it to a Jpeg instead it looked crap compared to the single processed image ..
Thanks for the experiment Richard. Dr Carl would be proud of you! There is no doubt all methods have resulted in excellent images. I was quite surprised how the stacked image seemed so much better than the single. Can I ask, did you use any noise reduction software or process in the single image? If not, I guess it makes perfect sense that the stacked would be better but I'm just surprised at how much better (at least on RU-vid 1080). It also makes me wonder if the tracked panorama is worth all the extra effort for what seems a minor (almost unnoticeable) difference. I agree that what makes them all good is the composition. If the image is a bit soft or noisy but the subject and composition are captivating, all sins are forgiven.
Thanks for watching Levin. Yes I used Topaz De-noise on all of these images. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the stacked image looked compared to tracked as well. I've been shooting a number of single images for an upcoming video and they are all really nice .. but it certainly is all about the editing I feel . . and of course composition and subject matter.
All the images are great Richard. For the average person a single image can do the job very nicely. If you want to go a bit further then stacking is a great option providing a better sky image without the need of going down the complicated tracker route. I agree the stacked and tracked images are very close, for myself I think I have a lot to learn with stacking and that is probably as far as I will go and not complicate things further by bringing a tracker into the equation (I can't really afford a tracker anyway - LOL) Thank you for sharing your expertise and images. Do you have vignette control in camera turned ON or OFF please Richard? I look forward to your next video :-) thank you again.
Thanks as always for your great comments Les. For many people a tracker is not a necessity. I have camera corrections turned on in camera on my Nikons.
