Beginners guide to taking your first milky way image - 6 getting a milky way 'selfie'

 How to take your first milky way ‘selfie’

An aim for this year; to get a decent milky way selfie!  

Below are the selfies I took last year. All of them can be significantly improved upon.

So, what have I been doing? What do I need to do to raise my game further this year?

This is post 6 in my blog series ‘Beginner’s guide to taking your first milky way photograph’ – a series in which I share my learning journey thus far towards this aim. As always, please remember I am writing as a complete beginner to astrophotography and the sole rationale for my entire blog is one of helping beginners (like me) make some rapid ‘basic skills’ progress in their astronomy and astrophotography knowledge.

My first effort at a milky way selfie taken at Mesa Verde Lodge in USA

In the car park  battling with stray car headlights and random security lighting coming on and off 

This was a single exposure 

What equipment do I use to obtain a milky way selfie?

·        Canon 800D DSLR

·        Samyang 14mm f/2.8 or Canon 22mm f/2.8 lenses – affordable, sharpish, wide angle lenses basically

·        Tripod

·        Intervalometer (although I am thinking of getting a remote shutter release at some stage this year)

Previous posts will give you tips about planning for milky way photography, additional equipment needs and basic camera and base astro settings. But, here I will stress a couple of things I discovered last year.

For a good selfie, you need a dark sky location.

Secondly, if you are doing a silhouette composition, you will need to find a location where you are higher than your camera i.e. you are shooting upwards slightly so you are silhouetted against the milky way. You can also use a light source such as a light orb, headtorch or adjustable LED panel as well.

Your image composition should tell a story - see my previous post on composition tips. If I am doing a ‘headtorch looking up to milky way shot’ I shoot in portrait. If I am using an orb to light some of the landscape around me – I shoot in horizontal.  

To get a sharp silhouette or image of myself, I am to make my self smaller in the frame by either going away some distance from my lens or by using a very wide-angle lens which will make me look smaller in the frame. In either case I am trying to be not further than 8 – 12m maximum from my camera.

I found focusing your camera for a selfie shot to be tricky. I have given tips on focusing at night in a previous post on camera settings. For now, I’d suggest you either focus on the sky itself (infinity) and you stand somewhere as close to the hyperfocal distance as you can. Alternatively, I an focus on myself – I mark where I am going to stand, return to my camera and then focus on that marker.

Of course, the issue about a selfie is simply this – how long can you stand still for? How hard is it to stand still during the exposure? If you are holding a lighting orb? Or when there is a slight chilly wind blowing? Practice getting a comfortable pose. I found that breathing out very slowly when taking the exposure helped enormously. Alyn Wallace in one of his videos I have embedded below recommends a sitting pose if you find standing for any length of time difficult.

 

Taken down the Roseland peninsula in Cornwall at Treveague Farm

Another single exposure but one where I held the light orb for too long so that it completely washed out the motorhome 

What camera settings do I use?

·        Manual mode

·        RAW

·        Lens focusing – manual

·        No light pollution 1600/3200 ISO; light pollution then 800/1600

·        Not using star tracker – then shutter speed 10 – 20” depending on 300 rule and lens focal length with aperture f/2.8;

·        Doing two images – tracking and stacking sky – f/4.0, ISO 800, 30” shutter speed; combined with a blue hour foreground exposure with me in it, experimenting with shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings  

·        I tend to do test shots irrespective of whether single or tracked or stacked exposures – checking against histogram

How do I take the photo if I am standing in the scene?

You will need a remote shutter release, or an intervalometer, or use your camera’s internal shutter release timer.

Again, the videos below give plenty of tips but this is how I do it. I use an intervalometer on which I set a delay – that’s the time period I have to get into my location and pose. I also have my camera’s 10” delay setting switched on. This means once I am in position, the 10” delay on the camera will then kick in – I can see a red flashing light or hear a bleep when that happens – this is when I firm up my pose!  I then mentally count down my exposure time in my head and then add another 10” on top of that before I finally move out of pose.

Single exposure with illumination from my smartphone

Milky Way at Wembury Beach

Did this work last year?

Yes…..and no……!  So what am I going to do differently this year? Not sure yet is my answer. I will start with what I did last year and then try something different. Rome wasn’t built in a day. I am expecting lots of duff shots but that is part of the fun. I tried single exposures, so maybe try and perfect this a little more and do some stacked/tracked/blended shots this year as well. 

If I make any changes to the above approach, I will add a postscript update below.

How much didn't go well in this effort? Where do we start? 😭

Well, I tried although Lord knows why! 😆

In the meantime, if you have any better tips and approaches, then why not share them in a comment below so that future post readers can learn from your experiences too

Dark, clear skies, stay safe, enjoy the forthcoming return of the milky way to our northern skies

Steve

 The videos below helped me on my first steps to taking a milky way selfie