Photography: Fahrudin Seferagić

Is it possible to photograph the Milky Way with Kit Lens? The answer is YES.

I know you’re struggling to know how to photograph the Milky Way with your kit lens gear and here are some helpful tips that will help you capture the Milky Way.

NOTE: All photos you see in this post are taken by me, Fahrudin Seferagić with my Nikon D3100 and 18-55mm lens.

1. Avoid Moon and find a Dark Sky

Shooting during a full moon will wash out your images, so try to avoid this. A dark sky free of light pollution is one of the most important things to consider if you want to capture the Milky Way. If you live in a big city, it will be very difficult to photograph the night sky and the Milky Way, so it is best to drive away from the city and find a good location that does not have such problems. A light pollution map will help you to solve this problem.

2. Date and Time

I always struggled to find out at which period and time is the Milky Way most visible. The best period to photograph the Milky Way is from May to July between 00:00 and 5:00 on the nights when the moon is least bright.

3. Locate the Milky Way

When I started with astrophotography, the only thing I knew is that the Milky Way is in the south but I didn’t know when exactly and where exactly at the south. So I discovered an app called StarWalk 2 to easily locate the Milky Way in seconds. Star Walk 2 is an exquisite stargazing tool that combines astronomical data with premium technology to deliver an effortless journey through thousands of stars, planets, and constellations.

4. Camera

You’ll be shooting at night with very little available light; you want your camera’s sensor to be able to handle the shooting conditions without introducing an excessive amount of noise. Your DSLR with the Kit Lens will do the job. Most of the DSLR’s come with an 18-55mm lens so this will also be fine. Of course, if you have a better DSLR or even a full-frame with a wide-angle lens with an aperture of let’s say f/2.8 or f/2.0, that’s even better!

Photography: Fahrudin Seferagić

5. Tripod is a MUST

You will be shooting long exposures (15 seconds and longer), so a sturdy tripod is a must-have. You can use any tripod as long as it’s sturdy. You can also photograph the Milky Way without the tripod if you have a new high-end camera but still, a tripod is highly recommended.

6. Focusing and Live View

In the beginning, I had headaches trying to focus in the dark with my kit lens so to avoid this, I used my camera’s live view feature to manually focus on a bright star. Alternatively, you could use the distance markings on your lens (if it has them) to set hyperfocal distance.

7. Camera Settings

First of all, make sure you shoot in RAW because you will often find yourself adjusting things like white balance, which you might not be able to change in JPEG images.

Whenever doing any type of night photography, you should always be shooting in full manual mode (M), as there is simply not enough light for your camera’s meter to calculate the right exposure. Then you set aperture to the maximum aperture which will probably be f/3.5 for a kit lens, but if you have more than that like f/2.8 then choose that, then the shutter speed based on the “500 Rule” (typically between 20 to 30 seconds), followed by ISO (which I would set to 1600 as the base and move it up or down as needed).

8. Post-Processing

Post-processing is a big part of astrophotography because your camera will capture a low-contrast sky that needs some adjusting. This means that you will need to play with different settings to bring out the details, increase contrast and colors. Take a quick look at my “before and after” shots of the Milky Way below:

Left: Before Post-Processing, Right: After Post-Processing, Photography: Fahrudin Seferagić

For the post-processing part, you will need Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. Both software is available through Adobe Creative Cloud Plans. With Lightroom, you can change things like exposure, contrast, play with colors and tone curve, and there’s even a Lens Correction feature that allows fixing such lens problems as distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting and perspective correction “non-destructively”.

I hope I helped you with this tutorial. Now take your camera and go outside in the dark night.
Happy hunting!

Note: I will be posting a weekly blog post related to photography on my website, so stay tuned for more.