7 Mistakes to Avoid when Photographing the Milky Way

In this video I’m sharing 7 mistakes to avoid when photographing the Milky Way… But these are just my 7 mistakes, what are yours? Leave a comment in the video!

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INSPIRATION
- What to Photograph in 2022
- The 36 Best Photos in 2021

PHOTOGRAPHY FUNDAMENTALS
- Understanding Natural Light: Golden Hour, Blue Hour and Twilights
- Understanding Depth of Field (DoF) and How to Calculate it
- Understanding the Hyperfocal Distance
- Learn How To Focus at the Hyperfocal Distance in 1 Minute!

MILKY WAY PHOTOGRAPHY
- Milky Way Photography Planning
- Learn Milky Way Photography
- Milky Way Photography Masterclass with Alyn Wallace
- How to Post Process the Milky Way with Nick Page
- How to Calculate the Milky Way Photography Exposure Time
- Photographing the Milky Way with a Natural Arch

MOON PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Plan a Photo of the Next Full Moon with a Building
- How to Photograph the Moon with Foreground
- How to Get in Focus Both The Moon and The Subject
- Moon Photography Masterclass with Jennifer Khordi
- Photographing a Full Moon Silhouette from Another Galaxy

SUNSET & SUNRISE PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Plan a Powerful Sunset Photo | When You Know the Date
- How to Plan Any Sunset Photo You Imagine
- How to Plan a Sunset Photo in a Valley | Or a Sunrise
- Photographing the Sun setting through the natural arch of Es Pont d’En Gil

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY
- Landscape Photography with Nigel Danson
- Landscape Photography Post Processing with Albert Dros
- How to Edit Your Landscape Photography in Photoshop with Sean Bagshaw

LONG EXPOSURE PHOTOGRAPHY WITH LENS FILTERS
- Calculating Long Exposure Times Using ND Filters

SEASCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY
- Seascape Photography Masterclass with Francesco Gola

METEOR SHOWER PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Plan Any Meteor Shower Photo You Imagine
- How to Plan a Photo of the Perseids Meteor Shower 2021
- How to Plan a Photo of the Geminids 2020
- Perseids Meteor Shower Photography Masterclass with Ian Norman
- Photographing the Perseids Meteor Shower with an Ancient Oak Tree

SOLAR ECLIPSE PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Plan a Photo of the 2020 Total Solar Eclipse
- Annular Solar Eclipse Photography Masterclass with Joshua Cripps

LUNAR ECLIPSE PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Plan the Total lunar eclipse with the Giza pyramids

STAR TRAILS PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Plan Any Star Trails Photo You Imagine
- How to Photograph Star Trails

CONJUNCTIONS
- How to Photograph the 2020 Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn

TIMELAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY
- How to Calculate Timelapse Settings

LEARN PHOTOPILLS
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- Calibrating the Augmented Reality Views
- Understanding the Map Buttons of the Planner

[PhotoPills]

Need help when planning or photographing the Milky Way? Comment below!
👉 To Download our Free Milky Way Photography guide:

[malcolmsellar]

I have always learned something from every single one of your videos Thanks

[davidl]

Hey don't listen to that lot, your accent is great! 😊 I wish I could speak a foreign language as well.

Thanks for this video, it's a a great refresher, and good timing. Next week I'm heading out on a trip I missed two years running because of covid lockdowns. So I'll post my mistakes after I get back!

I'd forgotten lens warmers and a club friend had said they use pocket warmers in a sock. Let's see how that goes.

[tigersunruss]

Great video! Astrophotography is the one thing I do excel at, for a beginner.

[burtjohnson]

As others have said here, and with all your videos, you have a HUGE ECHO problem on your audio. PLEASE get a better microphone, or use better placement, such as a Lavalier mic. That will dramatically improve your videos.

Second, when you have videos like this, with lots of distinct subjects, please place chapter marks at each item. Or at the very least, indicate in the notes up front, what time mark covers which subject. That makes it easier to go to what we are interested in, particularly if rewatching in the future to remember some specific point you made.

Overall, your software is fantastic your videos are instructive. They are just hard to understand due to the poor acoustics and layout (ie, no chapter marks)

[runsailwrite]

I love moonlight on the foreground. I feel there is a trend with blue hour foregrounds that is a bit overdone, especially when the foreground looks like daytime. It is actually dark outside. Also i enjoy a look with a sharp focus on a beautiful foreground element with blurry stars esp at 50mm or so. It is a cool look that is not yet overdone.

[astroandrius]

5:20 in my personal experience hyperfocal distance does not work that great in practice. For night photos most of the time I use a Nikon D850 and Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art lens and if the stars are not perfectly in focus I get some coma [in fact I found that I get best results if the focus is slightly beyond infinity]. As mentioned in the video it is not a big issue if you are not going to print it, but I still like my photos to be as good as I can make them. So for me focus stacking is the way to go I guess.

[jehousley]

Visit the location during the day. First so you can see how to get there from your car and get an estimate of how long it will take. It will also allow you to adjust your location if needed for brush or large rocks.

[godsinbox]

milky way core is available only on weekends, when the moon isnt out, when its not cloudy and when it isnt a work day or you arent too tired or busy.
for me, that is 14 days a year.
assuming a good night of entertainment is $50, it is an expensive hobby for a dedicated lens and/or track mount for about the same amount.

[eoslife]

Great video and super useful information recap for the milky way! Too bad, that most comments are complaints!... Keep up the great work!

[waynechase]

Great video, don't forget the lens cap!

[saccaed]

Mistake 8: Put the lens warmer on before you think you will need it
Recently botched a moonlit mountain and milky way time lapse because I rushed setup to catch as much sunset as I could. Couple hours later the temp dropped to the dew point and I had to install the lens warmer and bumped focus in the process. Time lapse came out alright anyhow as the defocus'd look highlighted major stars and it was only off slightly preserving the milky way. Going back out this weekend if weather holds and won't forget the lens warmer.
Anyone interested I uploaded the time lapse. It's a good example of planning for moon light to illuminate the foreground.

[sharonb]

Mistake #8 - setting the wrong Kelvin temp. I had a whole bunch of night time photos that turned out orange because I set my WB to use a Kelvin temperature but it was the wrong temp. It was a cloudy night, monsoonal moisture moved in so the shots weren't ruined, per se but kind of weird looking

[jpmissdeNice]

The mistake I make all the time is to forget to change my shutter speed when changing my focal lenght on a zoom lens resulting in trailing whem I go from say 16mm to 24mm...

[argusray]

Echo, echo, echo, echo - move the microphone closer to your mouth. That will help reduce the reflected sounds off the surrounding surfaces.

[shfeil]

What about using the delayed shutter release (ie 2 sec)?

[torreyance]

do you have a tutorial to have the foreground and background focus like in the photos or is it 2 photos combined together?

[armeniocavaco]

YOU do enough man...maybe you dont have the time to be perfect. All you do is free and the app in not that much the price of a Hamburguer, for God sakes...here from Portugal, Algarve, nice spots here :) keep going Rafa :)

[markjarrett]

When using the moon to provide ambulant light which quarter of the moon cycle would you use?

[west-crete]

Sound quality if the video made ait a painful watch