I had a quick getaway trip up to Cameron Highlands, which was about 3 hours drive from KL city over the weekend. The main subjects for photography are beautiful landscapes and sceneries of the hillside tea plantations as well as shooting night sky/Milky Way. I originally intended to just bring the 8mm F1.8 Fisheye lens, but decided against that since the feedback was not too positive when I posted about this in my Facebook page.
So I went with the E-M5 Mark II and 7-14mm F2.8 PRO lens.
Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side, as it was gloomy and the sky was covered in thick clouds, both during sunrise and sunset. Landscape shots were ruined, though we were out super early at ungodly hours for the sunrise. Milky Way was not entirely successful either. In my mind I had the Milky Way as the background and beautiful Cameron Highlands tea plantation as my foreground, composing it to at least fit half of my frame. However, the milky way was facing the opposite direction! Second issue we encountered as we lingered longer into the night (we started shooting the Milky Way at 1130pm, and ended at about 2am), the temperature dropped quickly (from 18 degrees down to 14 degrees) and the typical humid Malaysian air resulted in heavy condensation. I had water covering everything, the camera bag was wet, the tripod was wet, while the camera was weather sealed the front element of the lens was wet! This was a big challenge especially when we were exposing the shutter for at least 20 seconds.
Nonetheless, it was a great weekend spent with some beautiful people, and I really did enjoy the cool air and wish I can have this weather in KL.
The following few are the only shots that I could salvage from this trip.
40sec, F2.8, ISO3200
25sec, F2.8, ISO3200
40sec, F2.8, ISO3200
This could have been a glorious foreground for the Milky Way. Unfortunately the Milky Way was BEHIND me when I was facing this view.
Failed Star Trail, using Live Composite.
Unfortunately the star trail did not turn out well, because we were shooting by the road and cars do pass my every few minutes. I needed to expose the image using Live Composite for at least half an hour to get a good enough star trail shot. At about 15 minutes a car decided to drive by and ruin this shot. I did try to shoot one more time after this but then the condensation problem happened (cold high land weather and humid air).
I think there is magic when we see the night skies. I know my shots this time were not entirely good, considering poor foregrounds and typically nothing exciting in the shots. I guess that is the problem which landscape photographers have to deal with, we are slaves to the weather and we do have to depend on luck. In tropical countries where it can rain almost everyday, the sky is often covered in thick clouds.
While the camera was shooting the Live Composite of my soon-to-be failed star trail shot, I pushed my almost a year old smarphone Oneplus One to attempt a milky way shot. I know this is a stretch too far and indeed I never had any expectations, but I was curious to see what the Oneplus One can do. I used Camera FV-5 App that allows long exposure shooting up to 60 seconds and full manual control over the ISO and shutter speed.
Here is the shot from Oneplus One:
60sec, F2, ISO1600, shot on Oneplus One
I know the shot was nothing to be considered a good Milky Way image. Firstly the lens on the Oneplus One is only 28mm, which is not wide enough, as we need 24mm or wider for better composition (and to fit more of the night sky). I used 60seconds, and I am well aware of the star starting to trail and not looking like stars, but I favoured this over using ISO3200, which would result in worse images. Yes the noise is horrible, but honestly, how many smartphones out there can even come close in achieving this result?
Yes smartphone photography has some catching up to do when fighting against DSLR or Mirrorless systems but I do think that smartphone photography has come a long way, and will only continue to improve. A point and shoot compact camera from a few years ago of similar price range as the Oneplus One phone could not even shoot something like this.
I am looking forward to the day that I can just use my smartphone to shoot clean, beautiful Milky Way!
Ok back to E-M5 Mark II images...
40secs, F2.8, ISO3200
HDR Mode 2 in camera, 1sec, F5.6, ISO200
Milky Way season is almost over. I think we can probably chase a few more next month and the next opportunity will arrived in April next year. Now I should be planning for the location next month.
Have any one of you shot Milky Way with your smartphones? If you have any tips and tricks please do share. I have read the article published at LonelySpeck, and it was helpful and very inspiring.
