Photographing the Milky Way at 50mm

Capture amazing detail in the Galactic Core

The Milky Way rises over Cape Forchu Lighthouse in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

Nikon D810A with Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens.

Sky: Star stack of 10 exposures at f/2, ISO 12,800 (way higher than needed I later learned), for 3 seconds each. Stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker for low noise and pinpoint stars. These days I probably would take 20 exposures for even lower noise.

The lighthouse and buildings were blended in from another exposure at f/5.6, ISO 1600, for 20 seconds, to get a sharper exposure for the tower with better color and without the white paint completely overexposed.

Introduction

By and large, ultra wide angle focal lengths like 14mm (on full frame) are the normal choice for photographing the Milky Way over a landscape. But if you can find a composition that works well at 50mm or so (around 35mm on APS-C crop sensors), the results can be truly stunning with the immense amount of detail visible in the Galactic Core of our galaxy. Plus the core will look absolutely huge against the landscape, giving a dramatic perspective.

Planning can be done using your favorite planning tools, such as PhotoPills, The Photographers Ephemeris, or PlanIt Pro. Using the augmented reality of such planning tools can be very helpful in figuring out where the Milky Way will be over the landscape, but always take the planner times with a grain of salt and show up early in case the compass of your phone was off a bit (or a lot).

Milky Way Over Fishing Boats

Nikon Z 6, NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct lens @ f/0.95, ISO 3200, 3 seconds. Single exposure.

Lens Considerations

One of the other nice things about shooting at 50mm is that you can use a prime lens which will often have a fast f-stop of f/1.8 or brighter, allowing a lot of light to hit the sensor, which is very much needed at the short shutter speeds required to keep the stars from trailing too much at 50mm.

However not all lenses are sharp wide open, and there’s a good chance the stars in the corners would look much sharper and have fewer distortions if the lens were stopped down a bit. Test your lens and see what works for you.

Here are some examples from a couple 50mm lenses that I’ve used over the years, the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens and the Nikon NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S lens. The Sigma lens is a good example of star distortions that are common with some fast aperture prime lenses.

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/1.4 — Distortions of stars at the edge of the frame.

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens @ f/2 — Distortions improve by stopping the lens down a bit. The background stars are much better and a little manual retouching could be done to fix the flares of the brightest stars.

Nikon NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S lens @ f/1.8 — Same area of sky on the edge of the frame. This lens is much better with the stars even wide open, distortions are vastly improved.

Exposure Settings

Shutter speeds should be limited to 10 seconds or less at 50mm on full frame, and as low as 3 seconds for very sharp pinpoint stars. If you’re star stacking you can use shorter shutter speeds times combined with many shots to average in software later for pinpoint stars and low noise. See this post to learn about star stacking.

For ISO you can generally use something between 1600 and 6400, depending on the darkness of the area you’re shooting and what f-stop you’re using. Don’t go too high or you’ll overexpose most of the stars to the point of losing all star color, something that is much more visible in photos at 50mm as opposed to 14mm. At the same time, you need to go high enough with the ISO to even see what you’re getting when shooting, so use what is needed to get the job done!

Autumn Milky Way in New Hampshire

Nikon D5 with Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens. I used f/1.8 to get slightly less distorted stars compared to the quality at f/1.4 on this lens. Star stack for the sky of 9 exposures at ISO 12,800 (maybe higher than needed) and 3 seconds each, separate exposure for the trees at ISO 1600, f/1.4, 4 minutes.

Milky Way Over Mt. Katahdin

Nikon Z6 with NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S lens @ f/1.8, ISO 6400. Star stack of 20 exposures at 4 seconds each for sharp stars and low noise.

Exposure Blending

As always, you can take a separate exposure for the foreground at a longer shutter speed and lower ISO if necessary for capturing low noise detail in the foreground. This exposure can then be blended with the sky exposure within Photoshop (or a similar program) to create a final image that has detail from the foreground to the stars.

Milky Way in Acadia National Park

Nikon D810A with Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art lens. Star stack of 10 exposures for the sky at f/1.4, ISO 12,800, 3 seconds each. Separate foreground exposure at f/2 for 4 minutes and ISO 1600.

Be sure to enjoy all the details visible in the Milky Way when shooting around 50mm! Many reddish/pink nebulae will be prominent, including the Lagoon Nebula, Trifid Nebula, Swan Nebula, and Eagle Nebula.

Case Study: 50mm Milky Way in Big Bend

The Milky Way and Venus rise over Carousel Mountain and Homer Wilson Ranch in Big Bend National Park in Texas.

Nikon Z 6, NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S lens. All shots were at f/1.8.

I shot this at 50mm to get a very intimate view of the Milky Way behind the mountain, and to make the abandoned ranch buildings more noticeable. I waited for the Milky Way to rise enough to be clearly visible, which also happened to position Venus nicely over the saddle on the ridge.

Normally I would do maybe 3 or 5 second exposures for the sky at 50mm to limit star trails, but in this case it was insanely windy so I didn’t want the camera to shake in the wind and blur the stars during a longer exposure, so I took fifty 1 second exposures at ISO 16,000 for the sky, which were then star stacked in Starry Landscape Stacker (available for Mac but you can do this with Sequator on Windows) for low noise and pinpoint stars.

A single 1 second sky exposure. Not much detail in the foreground!

I figured of the 50 maybe I’d get enough non-blurry ones, but turns out my heavy duty Really Right Stuff TVC-33 tripod had no issue keeping the camera still in the wind so I was able to use all 50 for the stacking.

For the same reason I shot 9 exposures at 30 seconds each for the foreground at ISO 12,800, hoping that a few wouldn’t shake too bad, but turns out I was able to use all of them.

A single 30 second foreground exposure.

I stacked those foreground exposures manually in Photoshop by combining those layers into a smart object and using the median blend mode, resulting in a much lower noise image. Then using my normal workflow, in Photoshop I blended the sky stacked result from Starry Landscape Stacker with the foreground stacked result from Photoshop to create a final image with detail and low noise in the foreground and sky.

Good Luck and Happy Shooting!

To learn more about shooting the Milky Way check out my book, Night Sky Photography: From First Principles to Professional Results.

To learn about my editing techniques check out my Milky Way Master Class video tutorials.

Ready for action? You can join me on a workshop where I go over all the details in person.