My reflection on my recent astro shoot

So, as my IG post said I have been reflecting on what went wrong with my astro shoot the other weekend....

I have trawled the internet, read numerous books and blogs, watched videos, and banged my head against a brick wall - and all in the name of progression and learning. So did I learn anything? I think so, did I figure out why my photo shoot did not turn out as planned? I hope so, can I do anything about it? Yes, learn from it and move on to the next opportunity.

My best attempt is below, zooming in you can see the colours on the beach and rocks are not right, this is from where I had to apply exaggerated adjustments to ensure something could be seen

---

So where do I think I went wrong and what can I do about it in the future?

• ISO Settings - I set my ISO too low, normally when I do a night shoot not involving the stars I will use a long exposure and set my ISO to 100. To avoid star trails I need to keep the exposure to a certain amount (20ish seconds for my camera). In contrast to other shoots this is shorter and therefore less chance for large amounts of light to hit my sensor therefore increasing the ISO would have made it more sensitive and able to collect more light. This is also due to the type of sensor I have (variant vs invariant).

• Colour Casting - when I went through my post processing of the images I took I noticed that there were colours where there should not be colours. This is due, mostly, to the ISO settings but also the exposure length and as the ISO and exposure work together (with shutter size) to form the picture it made sense.

• Tracking - I am waiting for a star tracker to arrive as the stock has been low lately... Using a star tracker will allow me to expose for the landscape and get a good image here. Then setting up the camera on the tracker get a longer exposure of the stars as the camera will move with them. This will practically eliminate any chance of tails, get some bright pin sharp stars, and allow me to create what I need - all I would need to do is blend them together as part of my processing.

---

These points that I need to remedy have also impacted on my aim to create a time-lapse from the photos I took. The incorrect ISO has lead me to have some compression issues and a colour cast between the frames. I got a couple of time lapses but nothing worthy to display proudly, but I will include one below so the example can be illustrated.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

Graham