Milky Way and Night Sky Over Big Lagoon County Park, California


The Milky Way seemingly stretching out from a campfire at Big Lagoon County Park, California.

The first week or so of the whole trip prevented me from getting any shots of my favorite time of day: night time. The first night was entirely too cold so I wound up getting to sleep early and then every night thereafter was too cloudy. That is until I made it to Big Lagoon County Park in Northern California. This just happened to turn into something that I really liked just from pointing the camera in different directions and trying out different compositions. But it definitely turned into something that I really enjoy.

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Posted on November 14, 2009.
Posted in Landscape. Tags: , , , .
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  • Brent G.

    How do you get a photo like this? What kind of equipment do you need to do it,. It is beautiful. I am just starting out taking photos at night and have not been able to figure out the settings on the camera to get a photo like this…ie. Milky Way. Thanks for your help

  • http://www.cavaroc.com Mike Cavaroc

    Thanks Brent! You need two things to really pull it off effectively. A tripod and a shutter release cable. The tripod is so the camera can hold still for a long exposure and the shutter release cable is to ensure that the camera doesn't shake at all when you would normally click the shutter button. In order to get the Milky Way to show up you need to set the ISO as high as you can because any exposure longer than 20 seconds or so and you'll begin to see the stars make trails and will also distort the Milky Way itself. There's nothing wrong with a shot like that, but then you're getting into a different type of shot. I'm using a Canon 5D and so I turned the ISO all the way up to 3200 and let this one go for 107 seconds on the Bulb setting so in a higher res version you'd see a bit of movement by the stars, but it worked out well enough in this one. You also want to make sure the aperture is all the way open, in this case f/4.0, so that as much light as possible can get in.

    Hope that helps out! Feel free to ask if you still have any questions!

  • http://www.cavaroc.com Mike Cavaroc

    Thanks Brent! You need two things to really pull it off effectively. A tripod and a shutter release cable. The tripod is so the camera can hold still for a long exposure and the shutter release cable is to ensure that the camera doesn't shake at all when you would normally click the shutter button. In order to get the Milky Way to show up you need to set the ISO as high as you can because any exposure longer than 20 seconds or so and you'll begin to see the stars make trails and will also distort the Milky Way itself. There's nothing wrong with a shot like that, but then you're getting into a different type of shot. I'm using a Canon 5D and so I turned the ISO all the way up to 3200 and let this one go for 107 seconds on the Bulb setting so in a higher res version you'd see a bit of movement by the stars, but it worked out well enough in this one. You also want to make sure the aperture is all the way open, in this case f/4.0, so that as much light as possible can get in.

    Hope that helps out! Feel free to ask if you still have any questions!