Night Sky Shooting / Astrophotography on X-T2 : ETTR? ISO 1600?

shiftyonthemic wrote:

Hi All - I had my first attempt at doing some dark sky territory shooting of the Milky Way with the X-T2 and everything came back underexposed from Death Valley National Park.

Q1) Should I have cranked up the EC to ETTR to get more information? I've read conflicting information.

Q2) Does the forum agree that ISO invariance starts around ISO1600 and up? or is it ISO 800 and up?

Q3) Foolishly I didn't use the histogram and just went by what I saw on the screen. What are some settings to use it properly?

-Turn Pic Preview Effect OFF

-DR200

-Highlight -2, Shadow -2

-Daylight White Balance

Anything else?

I'm going to Acadia National Park to try one more time this weekend and want to make sure I come back with better night sky (landscape) photos.

I have a few examples I can share from Death Valley, but here's just one of them:

I've been pretty successful with starscapes and other astro work with the following basic settings:

ISO 3200
25s max exposure length (else you risk star trailing)
Wide open (f/2.8 in my case -- Zeiss Touit 12mm lens)
Shoot RAW for maximum post processing latitude

Even at those settings, your shots might appear somewhat underexposed. However, there's enough processing latitude to give you plenty of contrast and detail (one reason to shoot RAW in this case).  NR at that ISO is still pretty manageable with minimal "star eating" issues.