One Click Wonders

Milky Way Reflection, Puna Coast, Hawaii
Sony a7R V
Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM
ISO 6400
f/1.8
20 seconds

For as long as I can remember, I’ve gazed at the night sky in wonder. Around the age of 10, my wonder was augmented by inquisitive fascination that I pursued in books, magazines, and through the lens of my very own telescope. Throughout my adulthood, I longed to express that celestial wonder with my camera, but for years was thwarted by the camera’s inability to capture the night sky’s splendor. The Milky Way has long been a particular source of simultaneous attraction and frustration—two sides of the same coin.

Hawaii’s Big Island is the site of my first real Milky Way photography success. Starting with my first Hawaii workshop in 2011 (two workshops that year, actually), I could count on taking my groups to the Kilauea caldera rim and finding lava churning in Halemaʻumaʻu, the small crater on the caldera floor that had been active since 2008. Though the lava itself was usually (but not always) too low to be seen, its orange glow stood out brilliantly at night. Thanks to scouting prior to the first workshop, I located the spot on the rim where the Milky Way aligned with Halemaʻumaʻu, and for the first 8 years virtually every group (unless we were shut out by clouds) enjoyed Kilauea Milky Way success. So spectacular was the sight of the Milky Way’s luminous core above an active volcano, we’d often return 2 or 3 times.

I’d been attempting to photograph the Milky Way ever since my transition to digital in 2003, but for years found the technology not quite ready for prime time—there just wasn’t enough light for a usable foreground—and my one-click-only Milky Way foregrounds were either too dark or too noisy. Blending multiple images, one exposed for the foreground and the other for the sky, was against my personal rules, and I can’t stand light painting—it’s one-click, natural light only for me.

But Kilauea created its own foreground light that illuminated the caldera’s detail—natural light painting! I was in business.

Then in 2018, Kilauea’s continuous summit eruption ended in a blaze of glory when the magma chamber supporting it sprung a major leak that delivered devastating lava flows along the volcano’s East Rift Zone, before eventually draining into the Pacific and creating 875 acres of brand new oceanfront real estate. With its magma chamber drained, Kilauea’s summit crater (as we knew it at the time) collapsed, taking with it, among many things, Halemaʻumaʻu and my reliable volcano/Milky-Way photo opportunity.

Stairway to Heaven, Milky Way Over the Puna Coast, Hawaii (2021)

Of course, even without an eruption, the Big Island is (in my opinion) Hawaii’s most photo-worthy island, so I kept coming back. And fortunately, in the years I’d spent enjoying all that Kilauea Milky Way success, sensor technology (light capturing ability) evolved enough that a foreground light source was no longer necessary for a Milky Way foreground, greatly expanding my Milky Way horizons.

After a little research and exploration, in most of my post-2018 workshops, I still managed to give my Hawaii groups at least one night shoot. One year we drove to the summit of (nearly 14,000 foot) Mauna Kea and photographed the Milky Way above the giant telescopes up there, and a couple of other times we just happened to catch one of Kilauea’s many sporadic post-2018 eruptions, each more spectacular than the eruptions I’d seen on the pre-2018 trips.

For several reasons, Mauna Kea turned out to be an impractical long term Milky Way location, so on visits when Kilauea was quiet, I turned my eyes to the Puna Coast. With a rugged volcanic shoreline interspersed with still tide pools and black sand beaches, the Puna Coast is hands-down my favorite coastline in the world. But frequent clouds (usually a good thing) and air dense with moisture make night photography here a little trickier. But, as I learned in 2021, the reward of success justifies going for it despite the lack of certainty. In fact, despite its challenges, I’d have to rate the Puna Coast right up there with New Zealand and the Colorado River (at the bottom of Grand Canyon) as a favorite place to photograph the Milky Way.

Despite the improved light capturing capability of today’s digital sensors, and the quality of current wide, fast prime lenses, successful Milky Way photography requires many compromises: specifically, (much) less than ideal f-stops, ISOs, and shutter speeds. Not to mention, even when everything is as perfect as possible, you also need to lower your personal image quality standards.

Let’s Review

My Milky Way approach, excerpted and (significantly) updated from previous blog posts

Even though I’ve been fulltime digital for more than 20 years, and am not one of those photographers still pining for the days of film (not even close), I still approach my craft like a film shooter. Another way of looking at it would be that I want my creativity to happen in the camera, not the computer. That said, processing, though not my favorite part of photography, is an essential digital windfall that has enabled color shooters like me to extract results that were never possible with film. In fact, like every other digital photographer, I couldn’t succeed without processing. And processing is doubly important for Milky Way images.

But processing starts with the raw file, because the better the quality of the capture, the greater your processing options, flexibility, and ultimate result.

The method to my madness

I’ll start with my definition of a successful Milky Way image:

• One click—no blending. That doesn’t mean I think (honest) blending is wrong, it’s just not for me.
• Minimal noise with maximum detail: Since these two qualities are mutually exclusive in Milky Way image, my exposure, noise reduction, and processing efforts are always about finding the right balance. And the definition of “minimal” for a Milky Way image is not same as it is for a daylight image (see “compromise” reference above).
• Some foreground detail: The foreground doesn’t need to be daylight bright (shouldn’t be), but I want to be able to see something visually appealing/interesting there.
• The right sky color: As far as I’m concerned, the color of the sky in a Milky Way image is the photographer’s creative choice because no one knows what color it’s supposed to be (although I do hear from people who claim to know, and who aren’t shy about “educating” me—I mean, even if science says the sky should be green, I’m not going to make a green-sky Milky Way image, thankyouverymuch). If you look at my recent Milky Way images, you’ll see that I tend to avoid a blue/cyan sky in favor of something more blue/purple. And as time goes by, my sky-color preference has been trending closer to black, with a less saturated blue/purple tint. This just feels more night-like to me. But that’s just my opinion and I empower you to go with whatever color makes you happy.
• Uniform sky tone and hue (as much as possible): I don’t like a huge difference between the sky near the horizon and up toward the top of the frame, and usually try to even it out in processing.
• The stars should pop—within reason: I want the sky to be fairly dark, but the stars to stand out, but don’t overdo it (and be careful with Clarity and Texture).
• No part of the Milky Way should be blown out: While I want the stars bright, I don’t want them too bright.

The right gear

First, if you’re going to do it my way (one click, natural light), I can’t emphasize the importance of the right gear. Specifically relatively new full-frame camera model, a wide and fast lens, and a sturdy tripod.

In general, the newer your sensor technology, the better its low light performance will be. (A broad generalization that tends to be more true than not.) And a full frame sensor will almost always perform better in low light than a comparable-vintage APS-C sensor. I used to use whatever the current 12 megapixel Sony a7S body was (at this writing in September 2024, that would be the a7SIII), and while I’ll acknowledge that these are the best dark sky 35mm bodies in the world, I just couldn’t justify the marginal quality difference between my 12 megapixel Sony a7SIII, and my 61 megapixel Sony a7RV—so I sold the a7SIII and only use my a7RV.

For dark sky photography (it doesn’t have to include the Milky Way), light gathering is job-one. So you want to be using the fastest possible lens that’s wide enough to include the Milky Way and some foreground. My rule of thumb when advising my workshop students is 24mm or wider, but wider is better. And while f/2.8 is fast enough, faster is better. Because the quality of prime lenses is generally better than zooms, and you’ll likely be shooting wide open (usually the most problematic f-stop), I prefer primes for night.

While I have in my bag f/2.8 12-24 and 16-35 lenses, for night photography I use (in this order) my 14mm f/1.8, 20mm f/1.8, and 24mm f/1.4. And honestly, since getting the 14mm f/1.8 lens, I don’t think I’ve used the other two at all—the 14mm is the perfect combination of wide and fast (with excellent border-to-border quality). Before the release of the 14mm lens, I preferred wider view and compactness of the 20mm over the marginally faster (and arguably better quality) 24mm f/1.4. The only other lens in my bag I might use at night is the 12-24—but only if I thought the extra 2mm width would make a difference.

Exposure compromise

My processing choices depend a lot on my exposure choices, which as I said earlier, are all compromises. The real art of one-click Milky Way photography is balancing these compromises well enough that none ruin the image.

Capturing light usually trumps everything. For example:

• I generally go with the highest ISO that gives me a usable image. ISO 3200 is probably the lowest I’d recommend, but if you can pull off 6400 (or more), so much the better. And while any high ISO image will have borderline unusable noise that cleans up pretty well with noise reduction software (which has gotten pretty amazing), every camera has an ISO beyond which even the best noise reduction software can’t save. That ISO might vary depending on several factors—for example, since heat generate noise and long exposures generate heat, the longer your exposure, the more noise you’ll get. And I have a theory (that I haven’t tested yet) that my New Zealand Milky Way images are cleaner than my Grand Canyon and Hawaii Milky Way images because it’s winter (much colder) when I photograph in New Zealand.
• To avoid start motion I try to avoid 30 second exposures, something I can afford to do with my f/1.8 lens. Though some photographers resist a 30-second night exposure at all costs because of the slight star motion it creates, if you’re shooting with an f/2.8 (or slower) lens, I’d probably compromise a little star motion for the extra light 30 seconds provides—pinpoint stars are irrelevant if the image is too dark or noisy to use.
• While most lenses aren’t at their best wide open, unless the flaws of shooting wide open are egregious enough to render the image unusable, I’m always shooting wide open (or unless stopping down just 1/3 stop makes improves the quality significantly).

With my 14mm at f/1.8, I can usually keep my a7RV at ISO 6400, with a 15 or 20 second exposure time—all quality compromises, but my results are usually within the acceptable range. That’s typically where I start my Milky Way exposures, but when I find a composition I like and I know my focus is locked in, I almost always shoot a series of frames with a variety of exposure settings (e.g., maybe dropping my ISO to 3200 and bumping my shutter speed to 30 seconds) to give myself a range of choices when I can view the images on my computer.

Noise reduction

For all of my images, my standard noise processing is Topaz DeNoise AI plugin in Photoshop. But for my Milky Way photography (only), I start with Lightroom’s Denoise tool, paying close attention to the magnified view and experimenting with the reduce noise and save detail controls.

The balance you’re looking for is between reducing noise and sparing detail: we all know what too much noise looks like, but too much noise reduction can be even worse. As you make your adjustments, magnify the view to at least 100 percent and try to limit the amount of noise reduction to a point right before the scene starts to take on a smooth, plasticky texture. And examine multiple locations in the foreground, especially the darkest areas, because the amount of noise reduction and detail salvaging is not uniform across the scene.

Even though Lightroom does a great job, when I’m done processing my image in Lightroom, the first thing I do after opening the Lightroom-processed image in Photoshop is a very gentle application of the Topaz DeNoise plugin as well. For this step, again I magnify the view to 100% and apply as much noise reduction as I can without muddying the detail, taking extra care not to overdo it (not enough is usually better than too much). When my chosen amount of Topaz noise reduction works well for much of the scene, but still plasticizes a few areas, I often use the History brush at some opacity less than 100% (experiment) to recover the lost detail.

Processing

I’m frequently asked about my processing workflow for Milky Way images, and I’ve always been a little reluctant to share a lot because I don’t do any kind of image blending, I’m far from an expert, and my Milky Way workflow is always a work in process. Nevertheless, I get asked enough that I’ve decided it might still help for me to share my general mindset and approach. (Plus, it might help others to understand why my images, while more “real,” aren’t as necessarily more dazzling as the images of those that blend.)

This is where things start to get more vague, because my approach is less a recipe of processing steps, than it is a trial and error approach to finding the best way to achieve the results I want—steps that can vary a lot from image to image. Sometimes I can do most of what I want mostly in Lightroom, other times I lean more heavily on Photoshop—usually it’s some balance of the two.

When processing a Milky Way image, I make extensive use of Lightroom and Photoshop’s History panels. There’s no single best way to do anything, so I make a lot of “what-if?,” trial-and-error adjustments that I only stick with if I’m satisfied. That means you’re not going to get specific processing steps from me as much as you’ll get things to try and accept/reject. The other thing I want to emphasize (again) is the importance of magnifying the image to 100% (1:1) when you’re trying to decide whether or not to accept an adjustment.

Anyone viewing my Milky Way images over the years might notice how the color of my skies have changed. For years, whatever night sky color I’ve ended up with has entirely a function of the color temperature I choose when I process my raw file in Lightroom—no artificially changing the hue, saturation, or in any other way plugging in some artificial color. Since I do think the foreground (non-sky) of a night image looks more night-like (I don’t want a night image that looks like daylight with stars) with the bluish tint I get when the color temperature is cooled to somewhere in the 3000-4000 degrees range, for years I cooled the entire image with a single color temperature stroke—hence the blue night skies. But Lightroom now makes it super easy to process the sky and foreground separately and seamlessly, so I no longer cool my night skies nearly as much as before (or at all). Now my night skies tend to be much closer to black, less saturated and trending a little to the purple side of blue (avoiding the cyan side).

After Lightroom’s noise reduction, whether it’s the sky or foreground, I start with the Highlights/Whites/Shadows/Blacks sliders, performing lots of up/down trial-and-error adjustments to find the right balance (gotta love that History panel). The Lightroom Clarity and Texture sliders will make the stars pop (but don’t overdo it!), but will also exaggerate noise. And Dehaze will add contrast to the sky that really enhances the Milky Way, but like most Photoshop steps, overdoing it is usually worse than under-doing it.

For the foreground, a color temperature in the 3000-4000 degree range usually works, but specifying a temperature value isn’t an option for a Mask, so I just cool it to taste. To get the sky color I want, I play with both the temperature and tint sliders, usually going with something a little warmer than the foreground, with a slight nudge of the Tint slider toward red.

If I have to tweak the color in Photoshop (usually very minor adjustments on very small areas of the image), I select the area I want to adjust, Feather it fairly loosely (large Feather Radius), and adjust Color Balance and/or Saturation. I do lots of trial-and-error moves with Color Balance; with Saturation I almost always work on specific colors, and will adjust some combination of Hue, Saturation, and Lightness until I’m satisfied. Also, I find that some of the other adjustments I make in Lightroom and Photoshop pump up the color too much, so I often desaturate the sky a fair amount in Photoshop.

To make the Milky Way more prominent, a few passes with the Dodge brush set to Highlights can do wonders, brightening the stars without affecting the sky. I prefer multiple passes at low Opacity (<20). Probably the trickiest thing to contend with is a different hue near the horizon than I get in the rest of the sky. I can usually mitigate that somewhat with a feathered selection of the area and a Color Balance or Saturation layer, described above. And sometimes, if I’m really brave, I’ll select the offending area, Feather it, use the Eyedropper tool to pick the color I want from another part of the sky, and use the Paint Bucket tool to apply the color to the selected area. I usually get better results with Tolerance set fairly high (>50) and Opacity fairly low (<30), but not always, so experiment (like everything else, it can vary from image to image). If you do this, don’t expect it to work every time, and always examine the results at 100% because it can introduce some pretty nasty blotchiness that doesn’t jump right out at you on first glance at lower magnification.

With most of my images, the last thing I do before saving is sharpen. But since night images are rarely about fine detail, and sharpening exacerbates noise, I don’t usually sharpen my Milky Way images.

These tips are not intended to be the final word on Milky Way processing—I just wanted to give you some insight into my approach, both my goals and the steps I take to achieve them. I’ve been using Photoshop for a long time, but don’t consider myself a Photoshop expert, by any stretch. While there may be (and probably are) better ways to do many of these things, I’ve always been a simple-first photographer: Do things the simplest possible way, until you find some way that’s better, or until you encounter something you just can’t do. And if you take nothing else away from this, I hope you at least feel empowered to experiment until you achieve results that make you happy.

Back to the image at hand

Milky Way Reflection, Puna Coast, Hawaii

Based on the weather forecast for the Puna Coast, I wasn’t especially optimistic for Milky Way success in this year’s Hawaii workshop, but as I said earlier, the rewards of success always make it worth trying. I also had a backup location in mind for a couple of nights later—not as nice a foreground, but a greater likelihood of clear skies.

Despite the tremendous success of the Puna location I used in 2021 (the last two years, Kilauea was erupting and we did our night shoots up there), I decided not to return there because the precariousness of the location atop a 20-foot cliff above pounding surf made me nervous. So I decided to go to my favorite Puna “beach,” a wide spot on Kalapana-Kapoho Road with no real name—just a spot I stumbled upon years ago and have been bringing my groups to ever since.

As you can see from this image, my pessimism was unjustified and we enjoyed a spectacular shoot. I’d given everyone a Milky Way primer during the afternoon training, but it definitely helped that we could all set up in very close proximity, making it easy for Don Smith (who was helping me with this workshop) and me to get around and assist anyone who needed help.

The tide pool at our feet was a spectacular bonus, providing a mirror reflection of the stars and even a little Milky Way—a rare opportunity that I encouraged everyone to take full advantage of, even if it meant getting a little less Milky Way than they wanted. About 20 minutes into our shoot, a big black cloud moved in overhead and obliterated the stars, but within 10 minutes it moved on as quickly as it appeared—in this image you can see it exiting stage right.

The last point I want to make before (finally) ending this very long post is how much fun these Milky Way shoots are. Everyone was giddy with excitement for what they were seeing on the backs of their cameras, and that giddiness contributed to a party-like atmosphere with lots of conversation and laughter as we worked. One of my most memorable Milky Way shoots ever!

Join me in Hawaii next year!

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