I was recently inspired to take some pictures of the night sky after coming across an amazing website www.lonelyspeck.com. So much so that I bit the bullet and bought myself a couple new bits and pieces. Firstly I searched google for every wide angle lens known to man (I shoot a canon 5D and 750D) and having read review after review along with checking my bank balance frequently, I settled on the SAMYANG 14 mm f/2.8 wide angle lens.This was recommended on several sites and came in at a price that wasn’t going to break the bank. The fast lens speed along with its wide angle field of view lends itself to astrophotography. The main thing that stood out when it arrived was that it was completely manual. The shutter and the focus both had to be set. This led to a little problem when finding a subject through the view finder on my Canon5D. It was exceptionally dark at f/22 in normal daylight. This wouldn’t be an issue when shooting astro as the plan was to shoot at f/2.8 so much easier to view the landscape.

The lens was solid. The glass was producing excellent images, there was some small issues with chromatic aberations but with a little lightroom magic it was easy to fix. The second purchase was an app Photopills. Literally the best app I have used to date. At £10 these guys have come up with an app that makes shooting the night sky, in particular the milky way complete child’s play. They have thought of everything. After watching a short tutorial on youtube I am now able to easily see when and where the milky way/sun/moon is at any period of time now and into the future. This makes planning a shoot simple if you have somewhere in mind that you’d like to shoot. Equipped with my two new pieces of kit I headed to Portsalon Beach in Donegal. The bright centre of the milky way was due to rise at 5.30 am, so there was no chance I was going to get that. At 11pm I headed out into the night with a head torch and set up my tripod on the beach. The lights of Portsalon village were not enough to take away from the darkness of the sky. The app said it was a new moon so the sky should be completely dark… it was. I couldn’t see the sand on the beach, only the sound of the waves crashing on the shore led me to the waters edge. Using the app I located the tail of the milky way and set up to try and shoot it. 
This is what I got:

Focused to infinity, ISO 3200, f/2.8, 25 seconds shutter. 

You can just see the milky way stretching to the top left hand corner of the image. I didn’t really know what to expect from the shots but after shooting a few at the shore line and up the beach a little bit I headed home. The most fun part was post processing the shots. I use Lightroom and Photoshop for all of my photography post processing. The main points I got from excessively reading online blogs and material were:

1) Decrease the temperature.
2) Knock the exposure back a little (if you’ve exposed to the right of the histogram this is really effective)

These two steps alone create a totally different image. They knock back any light pollution and bring the sky back to looking like night. There were other tips that various sites provided me with and I’ve used a few of these too:

3) Bring up the contrast a little
4) Bring up the clarity a little 
5) Bring up the Vibrance a little
6) Bring up the Saturation a little. 
 
I know a little is pretty vague, but even with my own shots the amounts are totally different for each. I just used my eye as best I could to present a ‘nice’ shot… to me anyway…. 🙂 see below the final image below for my exact setting for these. The final part was the trickiest… The chromatic aberrations in the lens. There was some purple haze at the right edge which was easily remedied by defringing in the Lens Correction area of lightroom. The last thing I added was a small vignette… again some people may disagree but most of this is personal preference I suppose. 

I really enjoyed the shoot. I learned a lot and can’t wait to get out again to shoot the bright centre of the milky way. According to my app that should be best to shoot again on the 26th April (next new moon). So if I can manage to set the alarm and get out of bed I’ll report back with any pics that i shoot. 

My final processed and cropped shot looks something like this:



(clarity +15, vibrance +34, saturation +35)

Happy shooting.