When I was in Badlands National Park, I was only lucky enough to have clear skies for one of my five nights. Glad I went out and made the most of it! This was shot at the Pinnacles Overlook at 0131 MDT. I used the K-3 iii's astrotracer mode to shoot a 110 second exposure at ISO 1600 and f/2.8 using the Pentax HD DA* 11–18mm lens at 11mm. This is cropped slightly. If you pixel peep too closely, you'll see that the astrotracer is giving a bit of star trails on the edges, even though there are spot stars in the core. Given that I cropped in for the final image, I probably should have shot at 16mm where astrotracer is known to do better. (I blended the foreground from another shot with astrotracer off.)

Big shout out to Erik Kuna of KelbyOne for both the Outdoor Photography Conference and KelbyOne classes. I used the low level light painting Erik taught at the Outdoor Photography Conference to light the foreground and the postprocessing followed Erik's class on postprocessing Milky Way images.

[K2 to K50]

Obviously, a lot of planning, patience and learning goes into this kind of photography. Not to mention probably a lot of sleepless and possibly cold nights. I am happy to sit back and enjoy the results - which are very enjoyable to view.

[jon.partsch]

Stunning! I have just started trying this kind of work and can't seem to get enough exposure at iso 3200 f/2.8 and 10 seconds. I don't know what I'm doing wrong!

[Reality_Check]

I have yet to play with the AstroTracer functionality on my K-1, even though that's the main reason I got it. I do love this shot - well done.

[SelrahCharleS]

Beautiful! Very well done.

[pkboy]

Great work was wondering how shots like these would look from a k3-iii

[mtkeller]

Obviously, a lot of planning, patience and learning goes into this kind of photography. Not to mention probably a lot of sleepless and possibly cold nights. I am happy to sit back and enjoy the results - which are very enjoyable to view.

In retrospect, I am glad I only had one clear night while I was out there, since sunrise was around 0500 each day and blue hour in the evening lasted until 2100 or so. If I were up shooting the Milky Way every night, I would have had to go fully nocturnal!

Stunning! I have just started trying this kind of work and can't seem to get enough exposure at iso 3200 f/2.8 and 10 seconds. I don't know what I'm doing wrong!

Moar ISO! Also maybe more time, depending on focal length and sensor size. I like that the PhotoPills app will give you settings for your camera, focal length, and aperture for spot stars. I did find that it told me at 11mm f/2.8 on the K-3 iii I could do 15 s, but I was getting a bit of trailing so I did 13 s for my single shots. Those were at ISO 12,800 to ISO 51,200. They were definitely usable, but I had so much less noise reduction to deal with in a single exposure here.

I have yet to play with the AstroTracer functionality on my K-1, even though that's the main reason I got it. I do love this shot - well done.

Thanks! It’s fun to get out and play with these nice built-in features. I am not committed enough to astro to buy a tracking mount, but I will slap O-GPS1 on top of my K-3 iii and keep making shots like this.

Beautiful! Very well done.

Thanks!

Great work was wondering how shots like these would look from a k3-iii

Thanks! I figured I should post this since we haven’t had a lot of night sky shots from the K-3 iii at all, and this may be the first astrotracer image I’ve seen posted here at PF from the K-3 iii.

[Mooncatt]

I was in Southeast SD last week for work and hoped to do some astro work too. Unfortunately clouds started rolling in at dusk and wasn't worth setting up. Glad you got a good one!

[vector]

Very nice. I'll be trying my hand at this a bit this summer.

[reynb]

Brilliant work!

[ToddK]

Outstanding image! Thanks for sharing some of your techniques and post processing.

[robgski]

Well done!

[SunValley]

Beautiful! I went up there after seeing the eclipse in Nebraska in 2017 and I remember thinking that my K-5 had broken because I could barely see the MW on a 60s astrotracer shot at iso 400 and f/2! That was just the sky being a thousand times darker than my Montreal area locations!

[Photos-by-Chas]

Exceptional photo of a rather difficult but very interesting subject. About two years ago I was in the Badlands area and never thought of trying a similar shot. You made a fantastic photo. thank you for sharing.

[swip]

When I was in Badlands National Park, I was only lucky enough to have clear skies for one of my five nights. Glad I went out and made the most of it! This was shot at the Pinnacles Overlook at 0131 MDT. I used the K-3 iii's astrotracer mode to shoot a 110 second exposure at ISO 1600 and f/2.8 using the Pentax HD DA* 11–18mm lens at 11mm. This is cropped slightly. If you pixel peep too closely, you'll see that the astrotracer is giving a bit of star trails on the edges, even though there are spot stars in the core. Given that I cropped in for the final image, I probably should have shot at 16mm where astrotracer is known to do better. (I blended the foreground from another shot with astrotracer off.)

Big shout out to Erik Kuna of KelbyOne for both the Outdoor Photography Conference and KelbyOne classes. I used the low level light painting Erik taught at the Outdoor Photography Conference to light the foreground and the postprocessing followed Erik's class on postprocessing Milky Way images.

Wonderful picture of the Milky Way.