Milky way photography

Milky way photography, and photographing star trails, with the old film cameras was quite easy but then became a challenge with the early digital cameras. With the newer digital cameras, such as the Nikon D850 full-frame (and even crop sensor cameras like the Nikon D7200 and Nikon D500) it once again became easy.

Reaching for the Stars! Impala lily flowers in Olifants Camp, Kruger park. Captured with a Nikon D7200 and Tokina 11-20mm lens @ 11mm, ISO 3200, 25 seconds, f2.8.

Milky Way Photography - choosing a location

In order to capture impressive star photos you first need to go where the skies are dark, visit in winter (when the milky way is visible in the southern hemisphere) and choose nights when the moon is dark or has set before it gets dark.

Parks such as the Kruger Park and Kgalagadi in South Africa and Etosha and the NamibRand in Namibia are two great locations for capturing the milky way. 

Then, you should visit these parks when there is a 'new moon' or the days just before and after the new moon. A new moon means that the moon is not visible at all for that night, so the night is extra dark. Every month there is a new moon so plan your trips around these days!

To find dark skies, you should check the Bortle Scale, which is a nine-level classification system for rating the darkness of the night sky, with Class 1 being the darkest and Class 9 the brightest (inner-city skies).

This scale was created by John Bortle and published in 2001 and it helps photographers and astronomers to choose sites by quantifying the light pollution and skyglow affecting the visibility of the stars and other celestial objects.

Lower numbers on the scale indicate better sky quality, allowing for the naked-eye observation of more stars and details like the Milky Way.

Milky Way Photography in the Kruger Park

The Kruger Park camps are ranked from Bortle 1 to Bortle 3 so it is a great location to visit - the big-five animals plus the stars!

All the Kruger camps can provide good conditions for milky way photography but the north-eastern camps tend to be the darkest as they are further away from bright lights of the western and southern towns.

Here are the Bortle rankings of the camps:

Bortle 1 camps:

Shingwedzi, Olifants, Balule and Satara.

Bortle 2 camps:

Punda Maria, Sirheni, Bateleur, Mopani, Shimuwini, Letaba, Orpen, Tamboti, Talamati, Skukuza.

Bortle 3 camps:

Pretoriuskop, Berg en Dal, Malelane, Crocodile Bridge, Lower Sabie and Biyamiti.

So, the main criteria for photographing the milky way are to choose a dark location, in winter, on a moonless night. The above Bortle rankings will help you choose, but another criteria is a subject of interest.

If you simply point your camera up to the sky and photograph the milky way, you could be anywhere in the world, so we prefer to photograph the milky way with a subject in the frame that shows where we are and adds interest to the photograph - like the impala lily plant image at the beginning of the page. 

Many camps are too bushy or the fence blocks the views so we have narrowed down the choices to the following camps, which provide great views and/or foreground subjects:

Olifants - you have a 180-degree view to the south so can photograph the milky way all night from the view point in front of the restaurant or from your bungalow if you have a river-facing bungalow.  

Shingwedzi and Letaba - the palm trees can make good foreground subjects.

Mopani - you can photograph sunset plus the milky way above the baobab tree and the milky way above Pioneer Dam.This is our number-1 camp for photographing the milky way!

We drink our sun-downers at the fence below the Mopani restaurant - if you photograph the sunset from the deck at the restaurant, you will be shooting down and will not get the eye-level images that are more appealing...

We then have a quick dinner and go set up at the large baobab that is situated close to the Mopani reception and petrol station.

We can now get creative and also photograph the baobab with backlighting!

The milky way moves from the east to the west, hence we start with the baobab, as the milky way will be to the south-east or directly overhead, depending on the month.

After shooting the baobab we may have a sleep or go directly to the viewing deck. You can use an app, like Stellarium, to check where the milky way will be in the sky, at what time and plan your night accordingly. Some nights I have set my alarm for 02h00 as that is when the milky way would be over Pioneer Dam, while other nights it is there much earlier.  

Star Trail Photography

This photograph was taken from the tents in Punda Maria camp, Kruger National Park.

Here we discuss three methods for shooting star trails but you first need to ensure a few things in order to get successful star trail photographs:

• In the southern hemisphere you need to point the camera in a southerly direction.

• Photograph on a night when there are no clouds and no moon – that would be when there is a ‘new moon’, including the few days before and after this new moon.

• Shoot away from lights – even if the lights are miles away, with a long exposure they tend to show up in the picture. In this picture (taken as one long exposure) the glow you see on the horizon is from a veld fire that was burning between Satara rest camp and the Orpen gate in the Kruger Park, about 30 to 40 kilometers away from Olifants camp!...

...Star-trail taken with one long exposure from Olifants Camp. You'll notice that the star trails are not as bright and sharp as the first photograph - this is because the light from the veld fire has made the image too bright. You must shoot star trails on a dark night with no other light source!

• You need to ensure a stable tripod so when setting it up make sure you jiggle it around so that it is firm on the ground.

• Make sure the tripod head is tight as you don’t want it ‘creeping’ while the picture is being taken.

• Try and get some point of interest in the frame – it could be a tree, river, or boulder, anything that will add a bit of interest to the star trail picture.

• The f-stop can be anything from f2.8 to f4, depending on what your lenses’ biggest aperture is.

• The ISO needs to be as low as possible – try to have it on ISO 100.

• The camera should be set on ‘Bulb’.

• The lens should be set to infinity.

• You should put the eyepiece cap over the eyepiece. This is to prevent stray light from entering the camera from the rear. Keep in mind that you will most probably be stumbling around in the dark with a torch and we have had instances in camps where the neighbors are shining their spotlights all over the place looking for animals and they are unaware that we are shooting star-trails.

• You should use a wide angle lens; we use anything from a fish-eye lens to a 60mm lens depending on the circumstances.

• If the lens has VR (vibration reduction) turn it OFF and set the lens at infinity.

• Use a cable release such as the Nikon MC 30 or the MC 36.

• The camera and lens should be set on ‘manual’ – the auto-focus must be OFF.

• Ensure your battery is fully charged. To shoot star trails we use a D300 body with a battery grip as the battery in the grip lasts much longer than the battery in the camera body.

• Make sure the horizon is level – you can set up the camera while it is still light or use a Hama Spirit Level. If you don’t get the horizon straight you can always straighten it later in Photoshop, Google Picasa or whatever editing program you use.

You now have three options:

1) to make the exposure with one long exposure, 2) to use a series of short exposures and then join them together, or 3) to make a double exposure.

Option 1 – one long exposure

Here you can use a simple cable release such as the MC 30 as you open the shutter for anything from one to four hours and then you close the shutter. You must keep the camera Long Exposure Noise Reduction feature ON. If you don’t, the picture will have so much noise and look terrible.

By keeping the feature on, however, it doubles your battery usage meaning that a 1-hour exposure will take 2-hours or a 3-hour star trail exposure will now take 6 hours, as the noise reduction works for the same amount of time you had the shutter open to take the photograph.

Once you have switched the cable release off do not turn the camera off as this will turn the noise reduction off!

Option 2 – take a series of short exposures

...Star-trail taken with a series of short exposures from Shimuwini Camp.
You'll notice the light on the reeds in the river - this light came from people's spotlights as they were watching hippos and crocodiles.

With this option you don’t need a long-lasting battery as there is no noise reduction in operation. So here you must turn the camera Long Exposure Noise Reduction feature OFF. You also need to ensure that you have no other pictures on your compact flash card as you will need a lot of space.

In addition you need the more expensive Nikon MC-36 remote as this has a timer. You then set the timer as follows:

DELAY=0, LONG=4min, INTVL=1sec

When the series is finished you need to take one last photograph with the lens cap on the lens. This last picture will be used by the software to eliminate noise.

The program I use is free and can be downloaded from: www.startrails.de

We don’t like fiddling for hours after we have taken our photographs but this Startrails software is so easy and quick to use that we can’t wait to shoot star trails each time we go away.

Another free product that you can also try is StarMax.

Option 3 – take a double exposure

Take the first photograph of the main subject (tree, rocks etc.), exposing for the main subject, then take the second long exposure of the star trails as described under option 1 or option 2 above.

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