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

vegetaleb wrote:

I invite you to try stacking instead of ETTR

I made a full tutorial last year https://fujiandstuff.wordpress.com/milky-way-and-light-pollution-photography-tutorial-using-fuji/

That's good advice.

Say for example a nightscape:

14mm F2.8 at F2.8

ISO6400

30 seconds

NR off, LENR off (you could use LENR but it doubles the exposure time).

Take 6-12 shots and stack them using Sequator free software.

Noise reduction is best done by getting enough signal rather than post processing smoothing.

6 images stacked is usually pretty noise free without any processing noise reduction.

Fuji cameras are very clean in long exposure. Just remember Fuji uses a different approach to ISO so ISO6400 is more like ISO4000 on a Sony. No issue just bump it up a tad.

You can also do ISO3200 and boost more in post. Not really that important except watch the star colours. If you push it too hard with high ISO the stars lose colour quickly. In that case back off the ISO or the exposure time.

Longer focal length lenses even if fast will require very short exposure times and would mean either lots of stacking or lots of images to form a mosaic. Mosaics are harder.

Stacked nightscapes give many times better results that a single exposure pushed hard in post that really never looks that great.

Oh I nearly forgot, I prefer to use auto white balance. I know someone who recommends to use daylight white balance but the examples I have seen and in my own use doing that look overly warm, too yellow and orangy. False colours in my opinion.

Fuji and Sony do excellent auto white balance, one thing I like about both those systems.

Greg.