1st serious attempt at the Milky Way-over Sierra Crest

JC

The Milky way over the Sierra Crest. 33 second exposure, I also tried it stacking 5 10 second exposures, but I lost the clouds that way, gained more point sources, and didn't like it so much.

c&C appreciated.


Crop of Deneb section to show detail attained.

Adamideas

Hi! Fantastic first serious attempt! Congratulations you are on the right path! I love doing astro landscapes myself. I'm not sure what I should add because you seem to execute the shot pretty well and the results look good. It could be brighter (but I'm on a work monitor so I can't say for sure) and there is some splotchy color noise in the crop image. That can be tricky to reduce. I will say that I spend far more time post processing my astro images than any other type of photo that I take.

Things that I like to do/use for my own astro landscapes:
I enable long exposure noise reduction in my custom menu. Unless I am stacking but I don't do that very often.
Use a Heavy Duty "what the heck is he carrying?" Tripod (old Bogen/Manfrotto 3051)
Prime Lenses only, no zooms.
Wide aperture lenses stopped down 1/3 to 2/3's of a stop if I'm concerned about lens flaws and aberrations showing up in the print. Usually I'm not to concerned and will often intentionally vignette the edges to keep interest on the milkyway or star clusters.
Gather as much light as possible with wide apertures and high ISO.
Use Live View to focus.
Expose to the Right (ETTR) when possible (for star trail shots of 1-10 minutes).
Mirror Lock up and Cable release.
Take many photos from the same spot with slightly different settings in order to learn limitations and weakness of equipment.

One thing that has helped a ton is using Luminosity Masks based on tone selections and applied to a curve. Look up Advanced Luminosity Masks on youtube if you don't know what that is. It can be confusing but do try to learn it.

It really depends on the image but sometimes I'll use some minor NR in Lightroom and then open it in PS and use Topaz NR (with mixed results, honestly). I think it really depends on where the data lies in the histogram. Each image is different. Splotchy color noise can be distracting but most people never comment on it (photographers will). I use layer masks to desaturate certain colors to get at areas that didn't benefit from NR. You can accomplish a lot in post it just takes a long time. And remember, photographers will be picky but the general public will be blown away.

Sorry for this disjointed response, I'm at work and had to type quickly!

Good Luck,
Adam