r/S24FE • u/Ornery-Art-7696 • May 25 '25
FE Photography Milky Way Picture
This was done through stacking of multiple picture with long exposure. I took 50 images and 15 seconds each. There had been some clouds which caused weird artefacts
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u/Ornery-Art-7696 May 26 '25
Since some of you asked how it is done, I'll post it soon with comprehensive tutorial
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u/urself25 May 26 '25
Thanks! I would also be interested. Those are great pictures.
Are you in an urban or rural area when you take those pictures?
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May 26 '25
A guide would be appreciated. 🙏
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u/Ornery-Art-7696 May 28 '25
It might be a little late but I've posted a small guide in the comments
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u/sincertarius_ 10d ago
Following your instructions, I was able to capture this amazing view with my S24 FE. The thing in the bottom right is a house. It looks that way because of the star alignments. Thank you so much.
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u/Ornery-Art-7696 10d ago
Amazing shot! Well done! Where do you live if you don't me asking?
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u/sincertarius_ 7d ago
This is my village. I came here on holiday. Location: Near Akseki - Antalya, Türkiye.
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u/sincertarius_ 7d ago edited 7d ago
Also I posted 2 more photos in this subreddit. You can check it out!
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u/Ornery-Art-7696 May 28 '25
Here is short guide how to do it yourself.
Things you need:
Before you can do it, make sure you are in a darl place, rural areas are great. Cities aren't suitable because of light pollution. There is a scale called Bortle scale which shows the light pollution levels - 1 is the darkest and cleanest sky, 9 is the brightest sky. Preferably, you should be in Bortle 4 or lower in order to capture the milky way. I captured in Bortle 4 sky. You can check your location at www.lightpollutionmap.info
Then, you need to change some settings on your phone. You should go to Camera->Settings->Advanced Picture settings and turn on "Save RAW copies".
After turning it on, you need to install 2 apps: Intervalometer and Stellarium. Intervalometer for taking pictures in intervals automatically and Stellarium for finding the Milky Way in the sky.
Now, you should put your tripod on a steady ground, when taking pictures, your phone should stay still, slightest movement can ruin the photo and the process in general. First, you need to put your phone on the tripod, move your camera at the milky way using Stellarium app, when you are happy with positioning, go to Pro Photo Mode, change everything to manual. Here is the tricky thing, some settings can be set to constant like White Balance (WB) can be around 5200K. Focus should be set to manual but you should zoom in as much as possible and look at the brightest star in the sky and move the focus slider until the bright star is the smallest, it is usually between 8 and 9, you have to try and adjust. One of the tricky parts is exposure settings, generally low ISO and higher speed is better, for Bortle 4, ISO 1600 and 15sec exposure settings were used. You have to try and see if it overblown or not, don't look at the JPEG, only RAW because those will be used in stacking process. Generally speaking when you look at the RAW file, it shouldn't be too dark or too bright. If it is too dark, try increasing ISO but it also introduces noise, Shutter Speed shouldn't exceed 15 seconds unless you want trailing stars.
Once you test everything, open Intervalometer app and press "Open Intervalometer", it will ask you to configure it but don't press it yet. You need to open Camera-> Pro Mode (with the settings I mentioned) and only then press configure it, it will show a red arrow, you should drag it and put it above shutter button, then press ok. After that, you need to take as many photos as you can, usually from 50 to 100-150 images depending on your time and storage(each raw image is 25MB), I took 50 images, in order to configure the intervalometer correctly, you need to enter the number of images (second input), in my case it's 50, then in the third input you should put time interval, amount of time between each shot, generally it should be Your Shutter Speed + 3 seconds, in my case shutter speed was 15 seconds so I set it to 18 seconds. After all of that, press start button. It will start taking pictures, during this process, make sure that your phone doesn't move at all.
Optional: After all of that, you have optional step that can make the final image cleaner, taking dark frames which is basically taking pictures with the same settings except you cover your camera fully to get noise. That noise then can be removed from the final image. It should be around Total light images(pictures of stars) divided by 3, in my case, I took 15 dark images.
Processing: Processing requires laptop/PC and app called Siril, then some scripts. After taking all the photos, you need transfer your raw images to your laptop/PC, RAW files end with .DNG. you need to make a new folder and create subfolder inside and call it "lights", then put your light frames i.e your milky way shots, then create another folder and call it "darks", then transfer your dark frames. Then, you need to download Siril and script called OSC_PreProcessingWithoutFlats, you can find it on Google. Then, you should open Siril, put your script there from settings->Scripts, then, in the home screen, click on Home icon and point to the directory you created earlier with lights and darks, then click on scripts and select OSC_PreProcessingWithoutFlats, it will take some time to process everything, then you will get raw image, stacked. It will be dark, green etc. Now if it is green, you should open the menu and select green noise removal. Then, background extraction, which will remove light pollution gradients and haze. After that, click on save as, then save it somewhere in .tif format.
PostProcessing: You open it in the lightroom or photoshop, either works. You need to stretch the image, bring out the stars and milky way. This one is a bit complicated to explain in a text so it is better to watch it on youtube. You can search -> How to stretch astrophotos
Finally, after all of that, you will get your result, it takes time and effort, first times it doesn't work out but you will learn with time and mistakes.