[Greenneck]

Pentax k3ii 16-50mm 2.8 @16mm iso 3200 30sec 2.8 Stack of 4 photos Light pollution lowish facing. Shot this last season near Mount Rainier. Looking for a lot of CC before the season starts to get an idea of what I need to work on/ if I need to upgrade.
Cc requested: color, blending, general astro stuff, focus. Not super interested in composition cc.
One of the unedited files as a jpg

tipso core unedited - Album on Imgur

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[SteveinSLC]

Looks pretty good. You're getting some trailing, so 30 secs without a tracker might be pushing it.

[Greenneck]

Looks pretty good. You're getting some trailing, so 30 secs without a tracker might be pushing it.

Its hard for me to tell if its trailing from a slightly too long exposure or if Im a little out of focus. Thanks for the input I will have to test out some more shutter times soon.

[DeadJohn]

Cc requested: color, blending, general astro stuff, focus.

What processing software did you use? That might help us to make applicable suggestions.

Color looks good as-is. There are so many different ways to handle color. As an experiment, you can try to increase saturation for more color, which might then need color temperature adjustments to avoid it looking overprocessed.

What was your exposure length? The EXIF says 30 seconds, but your description says 6 seconds * 4 exposures = 24 seconds?

Did you merge 4 exposures just to reduce noise, or did you do anything to align the sky? The latter allows larger stacks, but takes much more processing work when you have foreground in the scene.

Focus looks pretty good. Upper-right and upper-left corners look a little soft. Your 16-50 seems similar to mine - usable but not ideal for astrophotography. Corners are not great at 16mm and wide apertures. It's not a lens defect, the lens designer prioritized other characteristics.

Trees look sharp so I assume you didn't use the astrotracer. If you want to get into layering, take one long shot with the tracer for the sky, then a second non-astrotraced shot for the foreground.

[Greenneck]

What processing software did you use? That might help us to make applicable suggestions.

Color looks good as-is. There are so many different ways to handle color. As an experiment, you can try to increase saturation for more color, which might then need color temperature adjustments to avoid it looking overprocessed.

What was your exposure length? The EXIF says 30 seconds, but your description says 6 seconds * 4 exposures = 24 seconds?

Did you merge 4 exposures just to reduce noise, or did you do anything to align the sky? The latter allows larger stacks, but takes much more processing work when you have foreground in the scene.

Focus looks pretty good. Upper-right and upper-left corners look a little soft. Your 16-50 seems similar to mine - usable but not ideal for astrophotography. Corners are not great at 16mm and wide apertures. It's not a lens defect, the lens designer prioritized other characteristics.

Trees look sharp so I assume you didn't use the astrotracer. If you want to get into layering, take one long shot with the tracer for the sky, then a second non-astrotraced shot for the foreground.

Lightroom for basic color editing then into photoshop for manual star alignment and noise reduction stacking. I have a hard enough time blending the stacked sky back into the stacked foreground. The couple times I’ve tried the astro tracer it was extremely hard to blend, it also amplified the star distortion near the corners

[kCA]

I'm not an expert on astro stuff, but here's my 2c.

There's slight trailing, but it looks okay. Since you're stacking images anyway, maybe take more photos with less exposure. Also, you may want to take a different shot for the foreground silhouette, then a different shot for the stars. Then combine them into one on post. Cause sometimes it gets windy at night and the blurred out branches doesn't look good in my opinion.

As for the color, try playing with split toning in Lightroom. I can provide you examples with this if you want, just PM me.

[henrikpedersen33]

Pentax k3ii 16-50mm 2.8 @16mm iso 3200 30sec 2.8 Stack of 4 photos Light pollution lowish facing. Shot this last season near Mount Rainier. Looking for a lot of CC before the season starts to get an idea of what I need to work on/ if I need to upgrade.
Cc requested: color, blending, general astro stuff, focus. Not super interested in composition cc.
One of the unedited files as a jpg

tipso core unedited - Album on Imgur

I don't know much about astro photography, so I cannot give good advice. To me it looks as if you have taken a very well shot.

[SointulArt]

You definitely have some trailing of the stars from the 30 second exposure. Perhaps consider taking many more images with a 10-15 second exposure and stacking those. Also, rather than manually stacking the images, you may find the free program Sequator useful. it provides options for "freezing" the foreground and aligning the stars, as well as some fairly impressive distortion corrections. It is fairly simple to use and my help get the most of you shots. I have also had good results from shooting the foreground separately to the stars (without astro-tracer) and using the astro-tracer for the stars. Stacking the star images and then blending the foreground into the scene in PS. Hope this is helpful!

[dhart2]

Appreciate the info as I'm still learning about astro.

[Bumbles]

There is a really great tool you can use to figure out what your maximum shutter time before developing star trails is.
Advanced Astrophotography Shutter Time Calculator/

This way you can check with your various lenses, plan, and know exactly how much time you have to work with. As for the focal point, the trees appear to be in focus while the stars appear to be slightly out of focus (that might just me). But since I've not done a lot of astrophotography (just a few here and there, still experimenting for best results), all I can say is.. practice!

It's still a beautiful image!

[Photogoof]

Pentax k3ii 16-50mm 2.8 @16mm iso 3200 30sec 2.8 Stack of 4 photos Light pollution lowish facing. Shot this last season near Mount Rainier. Looking for a lot of CC before the season starts to get an idea of what I need to work on/ if I need to upgrade.
Cc requested: color, blending, general astro stuff, focus. Not super interested in composition cc.
One of the unedited files as a jpg

tipso core unedited - Album on Imgur

Is that a person on the right? Can you crop a bit on that side?

[MossyRocks]

I would have used the rule of 300 or 200 for shutter speed and shot it in the 12 to 18 second range to avoid the star trails and upped the ISO to 6400. Then instead of 4 images I would have taken and stacked closer to 20 or 30 images to deal with the noise.

[W.G.]

Pentax k3ii 16-50mm 2.8 @16mm iso 3200 30sec 2.8 Stack of 4 photos Light pollution lowish facing. Shot this last season near Mount Rainier. Looking for a lot of CC before the season starts to get an idea of what I need to work on/ if I need to upgrade.
Cc requested: color, blending, general astro stuff, focus. Not super interested in composition cc.
One of the unedited files as a jpg

tipso core unedited - Album on Imgur

Simply awesome!

[ChristianRock]

It's a very good picture, ISO 3200 probably robs a bit of details but obviously not much. There might be a bit of trailing as well, not enough for the eye to see, but enough to rob some sharpness. Still, for web viewing size, it's perfect.

[SunnyG.]

Pentax k3ii 16-50mm 2.8 @16mm iso 3200 30sec 2.8 Stack of 4 photos Light pollution lowish facing. Shot this last season near Mount Rainier. Looking for a lot of CC before the season starts to get an idea of what I need to work on/ if I need to upgrade.
Cc requested: color, blending, general astro stuff, focus. Not super interested in composition cc.
One of the unedited files as a jpg

tipso core unedited - Album on Imgur

Milky pics are the best! �