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:

Another setting that can cause loss of star color & other problems is using Auto or anything close to tungsten WB.  Many stars are white or pale yellow or orange.  Turning the sky blue using WB eradicates those colors.

In camera Auto WB add another problem sometimes - color shifts w/ brightness.  In addition if you ever shoot a mosaic, these color shifts will make getting an invisible blend in your stitch unlikely.

A better option is fixed daylight WB setting in the camera & make the WB changes you want in post.  You can even apply Auto WB in post - after you stitch.

Many people think the night sky is slightly blue.  That can only happen if the sun/moon are near the horizon, you have rare blue air glow or your not dark adapted.  Its really easy to be fooled that that the night sky is blue if you have ANY light pollution or your camera monitor is on & bright or you haven't had your red head lamp off for at least half an hour.

Best way to know what the real colors are at night is to shot a neutral daylight WB jpg along w/ your RAW.  That's especially helpful if you have aurora w/ its wide range of possible colors or sky glow.