Old Faithful under the Milky Way

Old Faithful under the Milky Way

On a recent trip to Yellowstone National Park we experimented with time lapse photos of the night sky. The combination that seemed to work best for me was locking down the camera on a sturdy tripod, using a shutter release cable or remote shutter release trigger, 11mm lens, ISO 6400, f/4, 30 second exposure, and long exposure compensation (a custom setting on Canon). If I had a f/2.8 lens that was wide enough I could have used ISO 3200. In post processing of the RAW file with Lightroom 4, I slid the color temperature toward the blue to get better color in the sky, lightened the shadows a bit, and applied a little noise reduction.
[Submitted by Bruce McKee]

---